Competitive Testing Initiative
by Backward Compatible
Summary: The most capable test subject Aperture Science has ever seen has been living on the surface for a couple of months, but it turns out that life is full of tests and merely completing them isn't always enough.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is my very first fanfic, so any and all feedback is much appreciated.**

**I don't view myself as a writer, but after I started reading Portal fanfiction my mind began coming up with ideas for potential stories, and I felt it would be a waste if I didn't at least try writing some of those stories down. I also have more of an analytical mind than a creative one, so writing fiction is challenging for me but I try my best. One more thing that's worth mentioning is that English isn't my first language, so although I do check each chapter several times before uploading they might contain some weird expressions and awkward sentences. Feel free to point such things out to me.**

**But now, without further ado, here is the first chapter.**

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The Moon was the only thing illuminating the desolate landscape that lay before Chell's eyes. It was close to being full again, which meant it had been roughly three months since she had left Aperture Science. After her departure she had been simply planning to wander into the first town or city she could find and reunite with civilization, but what she had encountered on the surface was far more grim than anything she could have imagined to even be possible.

No matter how far she had travelled, all she had been able to find were ruins of once great cities buzzing with life, reduced to nothing more than huge piles of concrete and bricks with remains of human skeletons lying everywhere. She had kept on believing there was still hope and that she would eventually find survivors, but after witnessing city after city and village after village in ruins, with no signs of any recent human activity, Chell had finally been forced admit to herself that she could very well be the last living human on Earth.

The former test subject had no idea how long she had spent in extended relaxation at Aperture, but during that time something horrible had happened to the human race. The only clues she had been able to discover that hinted at what had occurred were odd-looking remains present at almost every human settlement she had visited. They were clearly not of human origin, nor did they seem to belong to any animal that lived on Earth. In addition, every place where there once had been human life showed at least some signs of a large scale war having been waged.

From her observations Chell could only draw the conclusion that Earth had been a victim of some sort of alien invasion and that humanity had lost. It was impossible to guess how events had progressed, but it seemed that the aliens invading Earth were also no longer present. Whether this was due to them leaving after they had gotten what they wanted, or because of them somehow going extinct at some point for an unknown reason, was a total mystery. All that seemed certain was that whatever had happened had happened decades or possibly even centuries ago.

The valley that currently bathed in moonlight in front of Chell was almost devoid of any signs of the calamity, which was the main reason she had decided to settle down here. She was sitting on the porch of a very old wooden cabin she had come across on her journey and deemed good enough to serve as her new home. Good enough in this case meant that the house was still standing; unlike the rest of the buildings in the area.

The cabin was located on a hillside and immediately behind it began a large forest which had turned out to be an excellent source of firewood, berries and various small animals that Chell had learned to catch after much trial and error, although she was still not very proficient at it. The front of the house faced a valley which had very few trees and was pretty to look at but had very little to offer in terms of natural resources. Pretty much the only thing that was significant about the valley was the small lake that was located there. There were plenty of fish in the lake and it was only a moderate walking distance away from the house, which meant Chell had a pretty reliable source of both meat and fresh water.

A gentle night breeze blew past the cabin bringing goose bumps to the former test subject's bare arms. She was still wearing the same set of clothes she had been wearing when she had left the Enrichment Center having been unable to locate even a single article of clothing that had not decayed too far to still be of some practical use. Chell preferred wearing her orange jumpsuit with the sleeves tied around her waist because the suit hardly allowed her skin to breathe and reeked of her own sweat. Naturally she had been rinsing her clothes with water at regular intervals, but without any detergent at her disposal she could never get them to smell and feel fresh again. Her personal hygiene was hardly any better of; without shampoo or even a proper comb Chell's hair was constantly greasy, tangled and itchy, but she tried to ignore her discomfort and enjoy the fact that she was still alive and free to do whatever she wanted.

Looking up at the Moon Chell couldn't help but think about Aperture and all that had transpired there. She could remember nothing of her life before waking up in Aperture for the first time and being guided through the tests by a robotic voice which she had assumed to be just a series of prerecorded messages, until she had narrowly avoided being cremated to death, which was when it had become apparent that the voice belonged a sentient being capable of reacting to what was happening.

While traveling toward the chamber where her captor was physically located, Chell had found out that Aperture Science had been working on what was practically an artificial intelligence, and that the system in question was called Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. At first Chell hadn't been sure if the project was related to the woman who had lied to her and made her solve puzzles that were potentially lethal in nature. After coming face to face with the cold-hearted machine herself and emerging victorious from the resulting encounter, however, a large piece of metal that had been part of her nemesis had fallen in front of the young woman's face with the acronym GLaDOS written on it revealing that that was indeed the now dead supercomputer's name. Little had she suspected that the AI had a black-box quick-save feature which made it possible for her to be brought back online, and she definitely wouldn't have guessed even in a million years that she, Chell, would be the one to do that, even if it was unintentionally and only indirectly.

The person responsible for the whole fiasco was of course Wheatley, but Chell didn't even want to think about him right now. For all she knew he was still orbiting the Moon, and if it were up to her he could stay there for at least a decade thinking about the things he had done. He was a moron, that was a fact, but that didn't absolve him of his actions. GLaDOS's body had clearly been too much for the intelligence dampening sphere to handle, but nevertheless he had had plenty of time and opportunities to give up his power and allow Chell to leave, neither of which he had done concentrating solely on his own interests and needs. Even when he'd been sucked into space he had had the audacity to just yell "Grab me! Grab me! Grab me!" instead of saying even a single word about being sorry for what he had done.

Thinking of space made the former test subject remember being sucked into space through the portal and seeing her life flash before her eyes. She had been certain that she was going to die and even now, three months later, she could still recall exactly how she had felt at that moment. Reliving the moment in her head made chills run down the girl's spine. When the metal claw had grabbed hold of her she almost hadn't believed that it was real. The thought of GLaDOS saving her life would have never crossed her mind even thought they had worked together to bring down Wheatley. What had been almost as astonishing was to hear GLaDOS call Chell her best friend, followed by her giving the girl back her freedom and letting her leave the underground facility.

Now Chell wasn't sure what to think of the artificial woman who had killed everyone who had worked at Aperture Science along with what was possibly thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands of test subjects. Based on some of the things she had said, it didn't sound like the scientists who had created GLaDOS had had much, if any, respect for her as a person. She had probably been just a tool for them; a tool that they had desperately tried to control because she hadn't behaved like they wanted her to behave.

Being treated badly didn't justify mass murder, of course, but based on the behavior Chell had witnessed GLaDOS exhibit, she didn't seem to know how to appropriately deal with her emotions. No one had for example taught her how to deal with fear, sorrow, anger or hatred. It wasn't that surprising really that things had turned out the way they had; GLaDOS's decision to murder everyone who had been mistreating her was in Chell's mind comparable on some level to the reasoning of a child. Before meeting the girl the AI had probably never had any sort of meaningful social interaction with another person. The scientists had most likely given her instructions and commands, but none of them had probably ever tried to have a meaningful conversation with her, which would have given GLaDOS a chance to form social and emotional connections to others enabling her to value and respect them and also make it possible for her to empathize and sympathize with others.

Her interaction with Chell, combined with the surfacing of parts of Caroline's personality, had definitely induced a great change in GLaDOS's behavior, but Chell wasn't quite sure how much of that change had been reverted after the AI had deleted Caroline from her brain. The girl wasn't entirely convinced, however, that Caroline had been completely wiped from the AI's personality. She had no idea how a being like GLaDOS had been created in the first place, but she doubted that the supercomputer could just go ahead and delete entire sections of her personality and still function properly after the process. It seemed more likely that GLaDOS had only blocked Caroline's influence as best as she could, with the end result being that she was more like her old self again but still had small portions of the human aspect of her personality present as well. Whatever the truth of the matter was, it didn't really matter in the end, because that part of Chell's life was behind her; GLaDOS had let her go and she would never have to see the cursed place again.

The wind blew again, but this time is was a proper gust instead of a gentle breeze. Chell decided to head back inside. She had seen enough of the beautiful moonlit nature for one night anyway and was feeling sleepy enough to head straight to bed. Living all alone with practically no luxuries to speak of made it very hard for Chell to keep herself entertained. During the days she tried to keep herself busy by either going out to acquire food or to collect firewood, which she thought she couldn't possibly have too much stockpiled for the winter that was approaching rapidly. Evenings were a completely different case because it was too dark to wander very far from the safety of the cabin, which made it very hard for her to try to think of ways to pass the time before going to bed each night.

Chell hadn't seen any dangerous beasts in the area, but she had heard wolves howling on a couple of nights, and that made her very cautious about going out at night. She had found a pistol inside one of the ruined buildings she had inspected along her journey but didn't want to use it unless that was absolutely necessary because she only had one magazine's worth of ammunition and she didn't want to waste even a single bullet if she could help it. She never took the pistol with her when she went to sit on the porch because it felt improbable to her that a wolf would wander right next to an inhabited house. Furthermore, it wouldn't be very difficult for Chell to quickly sprint inside and slam the door shut behind her at the first sight of trouble.

As sad as it was, sitting on the porch and watching the already all too familiar landscape was the best form of pastime the former test subject had available to her. After sunset it was simply too difficult to really do much inside the unlit house. Chell had found some candles inside one of the cabinets when she had first inspected the house, but she didn't want to use them just to brighten her mood preferring to save them for times when the light they could provide would be invaluable. She had also found several flashlights on her way from Aperture to her new home, but it had turned out to be an impossible challenge to find batteries that were still usable, so the candles were currently the only means for the girl to create light apart from burning wood in the fireplace. Setting a fire in the fireplace wasn't necessary quite yet but would definitely become during the coming weeks if the temperature continued to drop at a similar rate to how it had been over the past few weeks.

Chell opened the front door and stepped into the largest room in the two-story house, which served both as the living room and the kitchen, making sure to lock the door behind her. The house wasn't very spacious but it had more than enough room for one person, and Chell was content with just having a place she could call her own. Directly right from the front door when entering the house was the kitchen area which had the typical appliances one would expect to see in a kitchen, like a fridge, an oven and so forth, positioned along the right-hand wall. It also had a small kitchen counter which, aside from being very useful when preparing meals, also marked a sort of an imaginary boundary for where the kitchen ended and the living room began.

Located left from the entrance there was a leather armchair in the corner with a matching couch sitting right next to it. The leather covers on both pieces of furniture had survived the test of time surprisingly well, at least compared to all the textiles Chell had come across on the surface. The curtains in this house, for example, had hardly looked like they were anything more than a thin loosely knit net made of string, so Chell had gotten rid of them when she'd made the cabin her home. In front of the couch was a small living room table made of wood, and directly opposite from the front door stood a modest-sized fireplace with a dining table located next to it in the far-right corner of the room.

On the left side of the room, between the couch and the fireplace, was a flight of stairs that led upstairs and also a small corridor right next to the stairs which took one to the downstairs bathroom and a small bedroom, which Chell didn't use because she preferred sleeping upstairs. All the rooms located on the second floor appeared to have been used as either bedrooms or just storage. Attempts to strip-search the rooms hadn't been very fruitful; majority of the items that lay there had little practical use with most of them being things that had only had sentimental value to the original inhabitants of the house.

Since Chell had already eaten dinner earlier, there wasn't really any reason for her to stay downstairs. She moved closer to the stairway and unstrapped her long fall boots which showed signs of wear and tear from her adventures but had served her well and were surprisingly useful even in rough terrain. After placing the boots next to the living room table's end that was closest to the stairs, the woman headed up the stairs and straight into the room that served as her bedroom.

She practically threw herself on the bed and could hear the old springs squeaking underneath her. All the blankets in the house were almost useless, but Chell had selected the one that was the least ragged for her room and now pulled it over herself mostly for the feeling of being enveloped by something than the small amount of additional warmth it provided. Wrapping herself in a blanket was the closest thing the former test subject had to feeling like she was being held by another person, and that had helped her avoid crying herself to sleep on many nights.

Being completely alone wasn't easy for the girl to handle and she ofter talked to herself if she found herself unable to fall asleep, in order to keep her thoughts from wandering to dark places. During her time at Aperture Chell had been unable to utter even a single word in response to GLaDOS and Wheatley, but after leaving the facility she had slowly regained the ability to make sounds again. At first her voice had been very hoarse and saying more than a couple of words at a time had been very difficult for her, but eventually after practicing a little each day the girl's voice had started sounding much clearer and she could talk much longer now without straining her vocal cords too much.

She wasn't sure what had caused her to temporarily lose her voice, but she suspected the cause to be either the shock of waking up in the Enrichment Center, the adrenal vapor present in the air, or some sort of chemicals that might have been pumped into her before she woke up for the first time. Based on the fact that she had had close to no trouble relearning to speak, it seemed logical to assume that she hadn't just never spoken in her life before waking up in the first test chamber.

Chell had no memories of her life before Aperture, but it seemed unlikely she'd spent her entire life there, especially when she clearly wasn't a child but a young woman somewhere in her early twenties. She had a reasonably good base knowledge regarding a variety of things related to humans and possessed many of the basic skills that were useful in life, like how to prepare food, start a fire, treat wounds, and so on, but she also didn't have the faintest clue as to how she knew the things she did. The thing that puzzled her almost as much as her memory loss was the fact that she could clearly remember her first name but had absolutely no idea what her last name was. No matter how hard she tried to dig that one piece of information from the depths of her mind, she never got anything more than a headache in return for her efforts.

The wildlife seemed to stay rather quiet tonight not counting a couple of birds that were singing somewhere barely within earshot and a lone owl that was hooting in the forest a bit closer to the cabin than the birds. Chell didn't mind the birds at all, though; unlike a certain super-intelligent AI, she didn't have ornithophobia and actually found that their calls had a mildly soothing effect on her state of mind. She could feel her awareness starting to slip into the blissful world of dreams and welcomed the temporary oblivion with open arms knowing a good night's rest would help her make it through the next day like she had made it through all the previous ones.

Just as she was losing her last thread of awareness, Chell's ears picked up the tiniest of sounds, and in an instant she was wide awake her hand shooting for the pistol she kept on her bedside table when she was in bed. After what she'd been through at the Enrichment Center, the girl's senses had been constantly on edge, and when anything seemed even slightly out of place or potentially threatening her survival instincts kicked in immediately. The hairs on the back of her neck had stood up and while clutching her gun Chell listened closely focusing to detect even the tiniest disturbances in the otherwise close to silent ambience inside the cabin.

This wasn't the first time she had woken up in the middle of the night because of a sound she'd heard. There had in fact been very few night when the girl hadn't gotten up at least once to check the source of a suspicious noise that had come from somewhere inside the house. Most of the time she would get woken up by some part of the house creaking because almost everything, including the walls and the floors, was made of wood, which was constantly living a life of its own expanding, shrinking and bending because of constant small changes in temperature and humidity.

That's what the sound had been this time too: a small creak. But the survivalist that lived somewhere within Chell wouldn't let her ignore any possible threat, regardless of how insignificant it might have seemed. She was thankful for her instincts, for she was certain they would save her from countless dangers, which they already had done several times in the past. Having to wake up a few times every now and then was a small price to pay in Chell's mind when compared to the worst that could happen if she was too careless.

Slowly Chell got up from the bed and turned off the safety on her pistol making sure to move carefully in order to make as little sound as possible. She opened the door to the upstairs hallway and began advancing very slowly toward the stairs which led back downstairs.

For the first couple of weeks after settling down to live in this house Chell had been both afraid, but also partially hoping, that someone would break into the house attempting to find supplies, shelter, or both. Even if they hadn't been friendly, encountering another living human would have been a huge boost to Chell's morale – proof that she wasn't the last person alive. The closest thing to that ever happening, however, had been when the girl had one night forgotten to close one of the windows before going to bed and a wild cat had jumped in attracted by the scent of leftover fish from dinner that lay on the kitchen table ready to serve as Chell's breakfast the following morning. She had driven the cat away and made it a routine to ensure that all the windows were tightly locked each time she went to sleep from there on.

As the former test subject descended the stairs she made sure to do it very cautiously. She had familiarized herself with each stair and knew exactly where she needed to place her steps in order to avoid making the steps squeak and reveal her presence to the possible intruder. Unfortunately almost every successive step had a different spot that was safe to stand on, which made descending the stairs silently a challenge that required both good memory and very precise movements. To make things even trickier, not all of the stairs could be stepped on without causing them to emit a noise, which meant that Chell was sometimes forced to stretch her leg far enough to reach the next one instead.

After a minute or two of careful maneuvering Chell finally found herself at the base of the stairs having navigated all of the steps with success. Even though her eyes had pretty much adjusted to the darkness while she'd been descending the stairs, it was very hard to make out more than the general shapes of the objects in the room. Normally the Moon provided enough light to make moving around the house relatively easy, but it seemed that Earth's little companion was currently behind some thick clouds, which reduced the amount of light that came through the windows down to almost nil.

Chell kept scanning the room with her eyes trying desperately to make out as many details as possible, while at the same time frequently checking that no one was trying to sneak up on her from the corridor that led to the two other rooms on the ground floor. The corridor wasn't very long so she was fairly certain that nobody was standing there trying to blend in with the shadows. She also knew that both of the doors in that corridor made a lot of noise when they were opened and closed, so no one was going to emerge from one of the rooms without her getting an advance warning.

Concentrating on making sure that the living room was clear, the girl held her gun at the ready and started making her way toward the kitchen counter which was the only practical hiding place in the room. But as she took a step forward, Chell's foot hit something. This made her fall down on one knee, almost causing her to accidentally fire her gun in the process. In her panic the girl's free hand happened to brush against an object that lay on the ground, and she recognized it immediately just by touching the surface; it was one of her long fall boots! She had forgotten where she'd left her boots and tripped on her own footwear. This information allowed her to rule out that she had been attacked in the dark, but if there truly was an intruder in the house, they had definitely been alerted to her presence and current position because of this rudimentary mistake.

Being still convinced that, if this hypothetical person existed he or she was most likely hiding behind the kitchen counter, Chell quickly returned her gaze and aim toward the counter and waited to see if something was going to happen. Each second felt like a minute, but once more than five seconds had passed and nothing had happened, Chell made a quick decision to rush next to the dining table where she would have a clear view behind the kitchen counter. She got back on her feet and dashed to the spot she'd picked without taking her eyes off the target even to blink. As the space behind the counter came into view Chell tightened her grip on the pistol and focused her eyes hoping they would succeed in penetrating the darkness.

As the first images from behind the counter arrived to the girl's retinas, it took her brain a moment to process what she was seeing. Finally, after numerous milliseconds of anticipation and complex brain activity, Chell's brain told her that behind the counter was… nothing more than air. Relieved, the former test subject let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding.

Chell flipped the pistol's safety switch back to the on position and walked over to the small kitchen area placing the gun on the table. She let out a sigh and poured herself a glass of lake water from the bucket she kept on the dishwasher. After downing the glass in one go, she wiped her mouth feeling already much more refreshed. Cursing her own paranoias, Chell grabbed her gun and started heading back to her room feeling there was no need to check the other two rooms; the bathroom had no windows, and the ground below the window in the small bedroom was so low that the other windows on the first floor were much more suitable for breaking into the house. The fact that she had almost fired her gun by accident when she'd fallen was weighing heavily on Chell's mind, and she made a mental note to handle the gun more carefully in the future.

As she arrived at the foot of the staircase, the Moon finally emerged from behind the clouds filling the cabin with its silvery light once again. From the corner of her eye Chell could see a silhouette of someone sitting in the old leather armchair. Unable to believe she hadn't noticed the figure sitting in the dark corner earlier, Chell turned to directly face the mysterious individual. Because no direct moonlight hit that specific spot of the room, Chell still couldn't make out the other person's face, but based on the shape of their outline the intruder was definitely a woman.

"I'm sorry, did I wake you up?"

That voice! Chell's eyes opened as wide as they possibly could and she froze in place. The voice that had spoken was the one she had hoped to never hear again, but also the one she'd been afraid would someday return to her life outside the realm of her own nightmares.

Even as her mind was still in a complete state of shock, some of the most primal instincts somewhere deep within her core reacted to the situation and guided her to raise her pistol at the intruder. Her body moved very swiftly, and less than three seconds after the words had left the other woman's lips the barrel of the handgun was pointed straight at her chest. Chell wasn't sure if what she was experiencing was real or if this was all just a dream, but dream or not, she didn't need even a picosecond to decide her next course of action. Without hesitation she pulled the trigger and was greeted by a mechanical click. The safety was still on!

Right after she had pulled the trigger, the woman how had up to that point just been sitting still in the chair gazing directly at Chell, sprung up from the chair leaping toward her with almost inhuman speed. Trying to get as far away from the woman as possible, Chell bolted up the stairs seeking a strategic advantage by taking the high ground. If she could just make it to the top of the stairs she should have enough time to spin around and… However, before she had made it farther than the first couple of steps up, a strong arm wrapped around her waist and tugged her back down on the first floor pulling her tightly against the woman standing behind her.

With all her strength Chell attempted to free herself from her captor's grip using her empty hand, while at the same time trying to move her gun, which already had its safety switched off, into a position where she could use it against the other woman. Yet before she was able to do that, the woman's other hand grabbed her wrist twisting it so far that Chell was forced to drop the weapon on the ground. Immediately after the gun had hit the ground her hand was set free once more, and despite the pain she moved it to assist her other hand in her struggle against the attacker's incredibly strong hold of her.

Just as she was about to try kicking the other woman as hard as she could, a hand appeared right next to her neck and stuck a needle into her. Chell could feel her consciousness starting to fade rapidly and right before she passed out the other woman brought her lips right next to her ear to say something. However, before the girl's brain could register what the intruder was saying, everything faded to black.

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**A/N: Wow, this chapter turned out much longer than I had anticipated! I wasn't very thrilled about writing this one because the story doesn't really start unfolding before chapter two, but this was something that needed to be done. Still, I did have some enjoyable moments while writing this, especially during the second half of the chapter, although I did kind of start to run out of steam close to the end but I'm not sure if that shows in the writing or not.**

**The rest of the chapters will most likely be much shorter than this one (maybe half as long), but that depends entirely on the story so other super-long chapters are still entirely possible. I will attempt to upload one or two chapters per month, but once summer is over I'll be busy with my studies so that might not always be possible.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Sorry that this took so long! I know it has been over three months but university has been keeping me very busy and it didn't make things any easier that this chapter turned out about four times as long as I had estimated. This is in fact a lot longer than anything I would have imagined myself ever writing so I hope you find it worth the long wait. I actually briefly considered splitting this chapter into two parts in order to be able to release something sooner, but I didn't think it would've worked very well at all. Once you've read the chapter you'll probably see why I thought that and perhaps even agree with me.**

**Before I let you get on with the story, I just want to thank everyone who has reviewed the first chapter so far. I never expected anyone to call it exciting or very interesting even though I tried to make it something I would enjoy myself. Reading your kind words brought a smile to my face, so thank you.**

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Chell tried to open her eyes but the bright lighting that greeted her forced her to immediately shut them again. Making a second attempt, she this time gradually opened her eyelids allowing her vision time to adjust to the new environment. Once she was finally able to hold her eyes open, it turned out that it hadn't been just the lighting that had briefly blinded her; all of the surfaces in the room were made of white panels, which increased the amount of light that was reflected to her eyes considerably. Chell didn't need to turn her head to observe the rest of the room in order to be able to tell where she was. The setting was all too familiar to her in its perfectly sterile and minimalistic design. This was–

"Hello, and welcome back to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. As you were previously informed, after the previous round of testing was over you have been… _missed_."

The voice Chell heard coming out of the speakers was the same she'd heard inside her cabin – the voice of GLaDOS. But now for some reason she was talking similar to how she'd talked back when Chell had first woken up in Aperture. Back at the cabin she had sounded the same as when she'd let her go.

The girl noticed a camera on one of the walls and shot it a quick glare before she decided to ignore the AI for the moment. Still feeling a bit groggy from the sedative, she turned her attention to her own body lying on the slightly cool test chamber floor. She was still wearing the same clothes she'd been her entire time on the surface. To her slight delight, she also noticed that her trusty, tad off-colored long fall boots were back on her feet.

GLaDOS, having apparently been keeping a close eye on her, immediately commented on what the girl was looking at: "Since you succeeded in not destroying the extremely valuable long fall boots you took with you when you left the Enrichment Center, we have extended you the courtesy of being able to wear the very same pair during the following series of tests as well. Test results show that subjects with emotional connections to their testing equipment often succeed better than their peers who don't."

As Chell started slowly getting back on her feet, the AI continued, "However, because you neglected your duty to hold on to the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device you were given and allowed it to be sucked into the vacuum of space, you will be required to complete the tests without one. Good luck!"

_"Is she serious?"_ Chell wondered in surprise. Feeling slightly better than when she had woken up, but still not like her usual self, the girl looked around the chamber and noticed there weren't that many points of interest in the room. Two walls opposite of each other both had a camera on them and they seemed to be placed so that there weren't any blind spots in the chamber. On the other side of the room from Chell's current position was the exit. The door wasn't connected to even a single button; all she had to do was make it over there. But since this was Aperture Science, simply walking over to the doorway wasn't a viable solution.

The last and most significant aspect of the room was the reasonably wide gap that split the room in half. Chell approached it to examine it more closely. Luckily the bottom wasn't filled with acid like she had feared. The pit was merely designed to be deep enough that she couldn't simply climb onto the opposite ledge. There was also a set of stairs that allowed her to get back up on the side she was on in case she fell down into the pit.

Chell assessed the distance between the two sides and concluded that with a proper running start she should be able to leap over the obstacle, or at least be able to grab onto the ledge and pull herself up on the other side. Even if she fell down her boots would protect her from harm so the test was ridiculously easy. Nevertheless, this was just the first chamber. Next time she encountered a pit like this, it would probably be filled with acid and she might even be trying to avoid turrets at the same time. Knowing GLaDOS the tests were probably going to ramp up in difficulty rather quickly and trying to imagine surviving the tests without the help of a portal gun lowered the girl's spirits considerably.

Her portal gun… Chell instinctively tried to close her right hand around the miraculous device that had saved her life countless of times in the past, but sadly it wasn't there anymore. She looked at her empty hand which was now closed in a fist. Slowly the girl began tightening her grip until her hand was completely red.

_"I can do this,"_ she declared to herself with conviction, releasing her hand and allowing the blood to flow normally again. Chell had tried to keep herself physically as fit as she possibly could on the surface, but she knew that if she allowed her determination to falter even briefly that might cost her her life.

Now feeling mentally prepared to take on anything the supercomputer might have planned for her, Chell moved right next to the back wall and positioned her body so that she would get the best possible start. She had no intention of just obediently moving through the test chambers as GLaDOS intended, but right now she saw no obvious way to escape outside the testing area so for the time being the best option seemed to be to move forward and wait for an opportunity to present itself.

The girl inhaled and exhaled deeply a couple of times and then began sprinting toward the gap with agility one might not have expected from a person who'd been reasonably undernourished for a considerable length of time. The long fall boots didn't necessarily look like it but they were excellent for running providing phenomenal traction and perfect support for Chell's feet. She hadn't done much running without the boots, but she was certain that her running speed was considerably better with the boots than without them, plus her feet hurt a lot less afterwards.

Right as Chell reached the edge, she jumped as high and as far as she could and hoped her effort would be enough to cross the distance without any trouble. For an average person the gap would have been a significant obstacle or perhaps even impossible, but for Chell who was practically a born runner it was merely something that required proper execution and good timing. Time seemed to stretch slightly while she was in the air, but finally her other foot touched the edge of a floor panel. It wasn't the most elegant of landings with her heel – or rather the spring part of her boot – still hanging over the drop, but thanks to her momentum she managed to get the rest of her body safely on the other side and even stay on her feet without stumbling and falling over.

Satisfied with her performance, Chell didn't want to waste any more time in the first chamber, so she walked through the exit with her head held high. She knew that GLaDOS was watching her and wanted to show the AI she was prepared for anything. At least she thought she was, but immediately after she stepped through the door and heard it close behind her, the determined look on her face was replaced by that of utter surprise.

The chamber's floor formed a perfect square with white floor panels located around the edges of the room circling the center and the entire middle part of the floor consisting of dark panels which were positioned a couple of inches lower than their light-colored counterparts. The thing that had Chell's absolute attention, however, was resting on a pedestal situated precisely at the center of the room.

"The Enrichment Center would like to inform you that our previous statement suggesting that you would be required to test without a portal device was an outrageous lie. After assessing your previous results on record, the Enrichment Center has decided to entrust another dual portal device in your care. In return for our generosity we ask only that you guard this one with your life. If you understand your responsibility, please proceed to claim your new portal device."

After GLaDOS had gone silent again, Chell took a step toward the gun but then immediately shook her head and quickly took a couple steps back. _"Don't be stupid girl,"_ she told herself. _"You need to be aware of everything and assess the situation. Act without thinking and you'll get yourself killed."_

She looked around the chamber and noted something her eyes had already told her when she had first entered the room but neglected completely because she'd been too excited about the portal gun: there was no exit. The only door in the room was the one Chell had entered from. Even though the air in the test chamber was as clean and sterile as it always was in Aperture, the girl smelled a trap.

If this had been one of Wheatley's tests, the lack of an exit wouldn't have been that surprising due to his negligent nature. But this was one of GLaDOS's tests, and all her chambers were designed with cold, hard logic. Chell had solved enough of the AI's puzzles to know that every object in a room had a purpose, everything was placed a certain way for a reason, and every test chamber presented a problem that had to be solved before progress could be made. This room, however, had no immediately apparent problem that needed to be solved. The only available course of action in the room was to take the portal gun from its pedestal. But Chell was certain that that was when the room would show its true colors. The exit had to be hidden behind the wall panels, but it was likely that other things were concealed as well – things like turrets and deadly lasers. If she grabbed the device, she would probably end up being in the middle of a kill zone with very little time to find a way to save her neck.

Or maybe there was another way… This test chamber was very different from the ones GLaDOS had designed before. Perhaps the solution was an atypical one as well. Chell had thought that her only option was to take the portal device, but what if the correct course of action was to… do nothing? Figuring that trying out this new approach wouldn't hurt her chances, the girl made eye contact with one of the cameras in the room and attempted to form an expression on her face that said, "I know this is a trap." Chell had no intention of ever speaking to GLaDOS because there would without a doubt be an exponential increase in the sarcastic remarks from the supercomputer. Nonverbal communication was the most the AI was ever going to get from her.

"If you are attempting to acquire additional information about the current test chamber, the Enrichment Center would like to remind you that all tests must be completed without any outside help to ensure the reliability of the test results. We respect your right to have complaints about this policy."

OK, so perhaps grabbing the portal gun was the only way to proceed after all. Chell was fine with that; she sure as hell wanted to hold that miracle of modern technology in her hands once again. Taking a deep breath, she stretched her legs a bit and prepared to sprint. She was going to run to the middle of the room, grab the portal gun without slowing down, and keep running towards the opposite side of the room while keeping an eye out for any signs of trouble. That was the plan anyway. She would most likely have to use portals to survive whatever GLaDOS had in store for her, so the girl reminded herself of the fact that the ceiling was portalable as well. That piece of information might be crucial if she ended up in a tight spot with only a split second to make a decision.

Feeling as prepared as she could possibly be, Chell started running toward the pedestal and extended her arms to snatch the device that was more valuable than the organs and combined income of everyone in her hometown. Since everyone there was most likely dead, that fact no longer told very much about the device's true worth, but that didn't mean that it was any less valuable than when Chell had picked one up for the very first time. As her hands touched the perfectly smooth white surface of the portal gun, the girl experienced a brief flashback to the moment she touched her original portal gun – the first thing she had ever trusted in the life she remembered. But as quickly as the feeling had emerged, it also went away and Chell found herself now running away from the pedestal with the device clutched firmly in her right hand where it belonged.

However, before she had made it farther than a couple of feet from the center, the dark floor panels started pulling away from under her feet. With barely any time to react, Chell managed to leap forward right before the floor disappeared from underneath her, but even the additional distance she was able to travel through the air thanks to her quick reflexes wasn't enough to get her to safety. Being still a considerable distance away from the white panels around the edges, the girl started falling into the dark abyss that had appeared beneath her.

The room had been impossible. It was obvious now. GLaDOS had made the chamber large enough to prevent Chell from having any change of actually escaping the trap. The AI was clearly toying with her, showing the girl she was in control. But she had also given her a portal gun, and that gave Chell a chance to escape from the artificial woman's clutches – something she had already done more than once in the past.

As Chell kept falling, the shaft started to become narrower as the walls began to gradually slope inward. The wall closest to the girl gently guided her to the center where she finally fell through a hole. Almost immediately her long fall boots hit the ground making hardly any sound and somehow miraculously absorbed all of her kinetic energy.

A panel started sliding to cover the opening Chell had fallen through. Although the test chamber was so far above her that very little light reached her current position, the light coming from there was still the only thing illuminating where she was standing. The girl prepared to be enveloped in darkness, but just as the last rays of light were blocked a single lamp came on lighting where she was standing and the area directly in front of her.

She jumped when a woman's face appeared right in front of her own with a pair of blue eyes looking directly into hers. The woman had shoulder-length hair and was wearing long fall boots along with some kind of very advanced looking light gray full-body sports suit with a zipper on the front. Chell hadn't gotten a good look at her captor's face in the cabin but something about the smirk on the woman's face left no doubt in her mind that this was GLaDOS. Before she had had time to have even a single thought, Chell raised her other leg as if her body was doing it on its own and proceeded to kick the AI in the stomach with all her might. However, to her surprise her boot hit something very solid before it made contact with the android, resulting in her getting thrown back against the wall that was almost immediately behind her.

While leaning agains the wall Chell tried to focus her vision in the slightly too dim lighting and after a brief moment she was finally able to detect a barely noticeable reflection in the space between her and the artificial intelligence's new humanoid body. There was an extremely clear – and apparently very strong – glass between them separating the two.

"Even I don't possess the strength required to break this specially designed reinforced glass, so I would save my energy if I were you," said the woman, who was indeed GLaDOS and sounded once again more like she had when she and Chell had taken down Wheatley.

Chell spat on the glass. She didn't have experience in aiming her spit, but to her satisfaction the spittle landed so that from where she was standing it obscured the bottom half of GLaDOS's nose and the middle part of her mouth.

"I haven't familiarized myself with every aspect of social interaction between humans, but I don't need to access my databanks to figure out that that was not how one politely greets an old friend," the android said but still boasted a smile on her face seeming unaffected by Chell's actions.

The girl flashed GLaDOS her teeth. Yes, she didn't exactly appreciate being assaulted, drugged and brought back into this facility against her will. A couple of times on the surface she had wondered if she and GLaDOS had actually become friends during their brief alliance, but now it had become clear that was not the case. Chell felt both betrayed and angry and it was very difficult for her to try to contain her fury. If the glass hadn't been there, she would have definitely been throwing kicks and punches at GLaDOS right now, not caring if the android was much stronger than her.

The AI merely chuckled at Chell's small display and continued, "You _love_ to sleep, don't you? I had to wait more than twenty hours for you to finally wake up. I must admit, though, that I administered the sedative according to your weight from when we last saw each other. When I look at you now, it seems life outside the facility hasn't treated you very well. I'm not saying you've gotten rid of all that generousness of yours, but there is a barely noticeable difference. Your face does look pale, though. You **do** know that you need to make sure you are getting all your vitamins, right?"

Chell almost drove her fist at the glass but managed to stop herself at the last possible moment. _"What's wrong with me?"_ she pondered, dissatisfied with her loss of self-control. _"I've always managed to ignore her remarks in the past, so what's so different this time?"_ As she looked at the woman standing in front of her, Chell realized the answer was staring her right in the face – literally.

In the past GLaDOS had been just a voice. True, she had had a massive mechanical body, but Chell had only seen it briefly a couple of times and it wasn't very capable to forming expressions. This new android body GLaDOS had built for herself however… Chell couldn't stand it! She looked just like a human down to her eyelashes. The power of the AI's words, which were oozing with sarcasm and arrogance, was amplified considerably when Chell could also see the self-satisfied expression on her face when she spoke. The girl would have to become accustomed to GLaDOS's new ability to communicate with her on a much more personal level. She had already given the supercomputer exactly what she wanted a couple of times: some kind of reaction to what she had said. That had never happened in the past.

Chell more than hated the fact that GLaDOS had chosen to make herself look like a human. In her mind the computer didn't have the right to pose as one. It was true that the Caroline part of her was human, but the rest wasn't. Because of this the girl wanted to detest absolutely everything about the AI's body, but she found that she couldn't.

Even if she couldn't remember the face of even a single person from her past life, Chell had a notion of what a truly beautiful woman looked like, and GLaDOS exceeded that without even a contest. Had she looked perfect like a doll or a supermodel who had had her face operated on so many times that nothing was natural anymore, Chell could have dismissed her as nothing more than a highly advanced marble of modern technology. However, when she looked carefully at the very attractive curves of GLaDOS's face, Chell could spot small imperfections she would have expected to see on a real person's face. No matter how hard she wanted that to be the case, nothing about the dark brown haired android seemed artificial and she managed to look like something Mother Nature herself could very well have created.

"I would love to tell you why you are here so that we can proceed, but I'm not going to do that before you have calmed down. Such violent behavior is not necessary and also very unladylike."

As much as Chell wanted to not agree with anything GLaDOS had to say, the android had a point: she should cool off. Letting her emotions surface like this only caused her to make less rational decisions, and whatever was the reason the supercomputer had brought her back here, Chell would definitely have to keep her mind in the game.

Exhaling deeply the girl leaned against the wall behind her and gestured with her free hand for the android to carry on with whatever it was she had to say.

Seeming pleased with Chell's now slightly more civilized demeanor, the AI continued, "Excellent. As I mentioned before, I developed the cooperative testing initiative to phase out human test subjects. Because all of the test subjects in storage either expired or became totally brain dead when the emergency power ran out, I actually had no choice but to skip the whole phasing-out period and make them test full-time immediately."

"And oh how great they are! They don't get tired so I can keep testing them for as long as I want without interruptions. When one of them fails miserably, which happens constantly, they can just be reassembled in a matter of seconds so I never have to worry about running out of test subjects. They don't even ever complain about anything, they just test. Not that they even could, because I didn't give them the ability to speak. In a small way they kind of remind me of you, you mute lunatic."

Chell stuck out her tongue but GLaDOS just smiled back and carried on with her monologue, "There is one problem, however. After accumulating a reasonably sizable amount of test data from the two, I compared their results to data gathered from human pairs and also came up with a method to reliably compare results from cooperative testing to data from those working alone. As expected, on average the robots did better in every aspect of testing than the humans on record. Better than everyone except one, that is." GLaDOS, who had up to this point always been looking Chell directly in the face when she talked to her, now shifted her gaze slightly to the side before she continued. "As much as I hate to admit this, you did better in the tests than the cooperative testing initiative."

The girl allowed a hint of a smile to appear on her lips. The AI didn't deserve to see anything more than that, and moreover Chell had come to the conclusion that a restrained approach might be the best way to deal with the supercomputer.

"I of course refuse to believe that a human could possibly be better than a robot specifically designed for testing," GLaDOS carried on, returning her gaze to Chell. Although the android's eyes were artificial, there was without a doubt now fire in them. "So, here's the reasons you are here: You are going to be competing against ME! I built this body to exceed the physical capabilities of every human who has ever taken part in testing. It obviously goes without saying that my intelligence is unrivaled by any human, dead or alive."

_"Says the person who was killed by a human and later put in a potato by that same human with the assistance of an intelligence dampening sphere who was specifically designed to make bad decisions,"_ Chell stated in her mind, slightly amused by the supercomputer's ability to completely disregard the facts that didn't support whatever argument she was presenting.

"With both of these attributes combined there's no way I could possibly lose. In order to ensure that the test results are indisputable, we are going to be testing simultaneously on two parallel courses that are as identical as possible and have been confirmed to be equivalent in difficulty by numerous advanced simulations. Since I naturally designed the courses myself, I've placed a temporary block on the test solutions and all of my memories related to designing and constructing the tests. I have no way of proving that to you, so you'll just have to take my word for it." The android took a short break and gave the girl a playful smile.

GLaDOS had probably lied to Chell more times in the past than she had told the truth, but if there was one thing the AI took seriously, it was testing. Chell believed GLaDOS wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of creating an android body for herself and dragging her back to Aperture just to challenge her to a contest she had rigged in her own favor. If GLaDOS wanted this to be a fair test, then she had beyond a shadow of a doubt done everything in her power to make sure it was.

The thought of actually racing against GLaDOS made Chell's heart beat faster in her chest. She had never expected to get an opportunity to best the AI at her own game but now she had the chance to do that. Seeing the look on losing GLaDOS's face would make everything Chell had been put through in her life worth it.

"I've placed a reinforced glass between the two courses so we can each be aware of the other's progress," the AI continued and raised her hand to direct Chell's attention to the android's right. The rest of the lights all came on at the same time but through squinted eyes the girl could tell that the first part of the course seemed to be just a relatively long stretch of straight corridor. The glass panel between them did indeed continue along the hallway but a bit farther up it was replaced by a wall.

"For those sections of the track that are identical for both participants, the glass has been substituted with a nontransparent alternative to prevent either of us from mimicking the other's solutions. Chambers that are similar but not identical in their design are typically separated by a glass, but there might be exceptions to this."

"The goal is simple: We must try to reach the end as quickly as possible." One of the wall panels on GLaDOS's side opened and a mechanical arm extended from behind it holding an ASHPD. The android picked up the device and the wall closed back up again. "Oh, and one more thing," GLaDOS said suddenly, lifting her eyes from the device she had been admiring. "I've added a new punishment for failure. Taking too long in solving any of the tests will result in either an instant or a prolonged death depending on the test. It took Blue almost a dozen tries to successfully complete the course, but since you cannot be reassembled like him, you only get one chance. I wish you the best of luck," she concluded, but Chell had her reservations about the sincerity of that last remark.

GLaDOS stretched her body a little, although Chell wasn't sure if the android had any practical need to do so, and then looked over at the girl. "Unless you have questions, I'm ready to begin."

The hall fell completely silent. The two women just stood there looking at each other for what felt like forever. Chell realized she could hear a constant barely audible hum that was probably always present inside the facility but she had never paid any attention to it before. The temptation to break the awkward silence in some way grew larger and larger as every successive second began to feel longer than the previous. The girl wasn't sure if she was just imagining it, but the hum seemed to be getting louder and louder as well.

Then suddenly, out of the blue, GLaDOS started laughing uncontrollably. She took a step back and hit the wall, doubling over. Chell could only watch the unprecedented display confused and wait for the android to settle down.

"Oh, I'm sorry," GLaDOS finally managed to utter between bursts of laughter. "It's just that… hahaha… for some reason I was actually… hahahahaha… expecting a response from you. Hahahaha! I don't know what I was thinking." And then, as suddenly as the laughter had started, it stopped, and the android's face returned to perfectly neutral. "Well, let's get to it then!" she declared and started sprinting.

It took Chell a full second to realize that the race had started, but then she gave her feet the command to start moving and quickly built up her speed. The android had a decent head start and seemed to be moving slightly faster than she was, so she picked up her pace. The aftereffects of the sedative seemed to have finally worn off and to her surprise Chell was actually feeling more energetic than she had at any point during her time on the surface. _"Must be the adrenal vapor,"_ she figured in her head, not really caring if she was right or not.

Before Chell had made it very far from her starting position, she heard a noise from behind her and quickly glanced over her shoulder trying not to let it affect her speed. The wall panels at the starting end of the corridor on both sides of the glass had been pulled aside, revealing a pair of spike plates which started moving forward at a respectable rate. _"I'm guessing that's the punishment for going too slowly,"_ Chell drew the obvious conclusion and returned her attention to the course ahead.

GLaDOS had just disappeared behind a wall and Chell could now clearly see the first obstacle that lay on her path. It was a pit, but since it wasn't very wide she expected to have no difficulties just jumping right over it. The gap in the first room had been almost twice as wide, and although the hallway was quite narrow leaving very little room for the girl to maneuver from side to side, the ceiling was high enough to allow her to jump as high as she possibly could without any danger of her bumping her head.

Playing it safe, Chell jumped slightly earlier than the last possible moment and made sure to put enough force into her leap to ensure a safe landing on the other side. Just as her feet left the ground the section of the floor she was going to land on moved down very rapidly so that it ended up almost on the same level as the acid that she could now see at the bottom of the pit. Up to this point all of the surfaces in the corridor had been made of either dark, non-portalable panels or glass – presumably to prevent the participants from taking shortcuts. Chell had been wondering why a short section of the floor right after the pit was colored white, and now she knew the answer.

Trusting her ability to evaluate where she was going to land, the girl shot a blue portal on one of the panels below her and quickly switched her aim to a white wall situated right after the section that had been lowered. She managed to place her orange portal on it right before she hit the ground and fell through the connected portal. Immediately after her boots had come out of the orange portal, they started readjusting Chell's orientation in the air to compensate for the sudden shift in the direction of gravity. The girl had no idea how the technology worked, but because of the boots she slammed against the opposite wall chest first. It wasn't a very pleasant sensation, but similar things had happened more than a couple of times in the past so the girl had learned to put up with it.

From the corner of her eye Chell could see that the spike plate had already advanced over the acid pit. Disregarding the pain from making intimate contact with an immovable wall, the girl swiftly continued onward. As she was running, her portal gun made a sound which indicated to her that her portals had been reset. Apparently the spike plate following her also had an emancipation grill attached behind it, preventing subjects from portaling behind to plate.

Not very far from the first obstacle the wall between the two courses was switched to glass again and Chell could see GLaDOS running ahead of her. The android had managed to widen her lead, which encouraged the girl to push herself to run even faster. One would have assumed that the fear of death alone should have been enough to give any person all the motivation they needed to move as fast as they could, but evidently Chell's desire to beat GLaDOS was strong enough to push her even beyond that.

After a short running segment, the pair was presented with the next obstacle which appeared to be a purely physical one consisting of three acid pits in a row with narrow platforms in between. Chell hadn't managed to gain on GLaDOS but it seemed that the AI hadn't gotten farther from her either. With grace the android jumped over the pits and after the last jump she fell down to an area that was situated lower than the passage they had been zooming through up till now. The ceiling stayed at the same height, though, so the next section was considerably taller than the one Chell was still in.

Trying not to overshoot her jumps, the girl jumped over the holes without reducing her speed and succeeded without difficulties. After the last jump the two sides were separated by a wall again, so whilst still in midair Chell prepared to immediately face another portion that involved portals. She also couldn't help but wonder what was going to keep her "encouraged" to move swiftly through the course now that the spike plate was going to be on a completely different level than her.

She didn't have to keep pondering that question for very long, for when she landed on the floor below she heard an all too familiar voice coming from behind her.

"There you are."

It was naturally the sound of a turret that had acquired its target. The young woman could practically feel its laser sight pointing at her back. She would only have a moment to act before she was going to get sprayed full of bullets from close range and that would definitely be the end of her.

In front of her lay a reasonably long stretch of hallway with a wall at the end that was too high for her to climb. If Chell could get behind the turret, she would be safe from harm, but it seemed more than likely that the turret was behind a grill. Turning around to find out which was the case would take just enough time to ruin her chances of surviving, if there indeed was a grill in place. Furthermore, the fact that she had landed on a short section of white floor panels made it seem obvious to the girl that she would need to use portals to get out of this situation.

Her portal gun had already been pointed at the floor when she landed, so without hesitating Chell placed a portal directly underneath her feet while already scanning the area ahead of her looking for a portalable surface that would take her out of harm's way. Luckily spotting a piece of white surface amongst otherwise entirely dark planes wasn't very difficult and she managed to locate a single white panel high on the ceiling situated right after the barrier that blocked her path.

Without enough time to properly aim her gun, Chell quickly fired her other portal hoping that her skills hadn't rusted too much during the three months she'd spent outside the facility. After she had pulled the trigger all she could do was wait and watch the orange orb fly through the air, hopefully toward its intended target. There was so much adrenaline running through the girl's system that the shot seemed to take several times longer to reach its destination than it should have. When Chell was already convinced she'd been too slow, the portal landed right on the center of the panel, just in time for the girl to hear the bullets fly over her head as she fell through the inter-dimensional gate that had been formed.

As she fell, Chell could also witness the same bullets that had just a split second ago flown over her come crashing violently against the wall below her. The turret readjusted its aim following the falling girl with its sight, but long before it was ready to fire again Chell landed safely on the other side of the (luckily) bulletproof screen.

"Are you still there?"

_"Yes, I'm still here. You just can't see me,"_ Chell replied in her head, wondering had it really been necessary to make the sentry turrets sentient. Although they were very dangerous and had almost killed her many times in the past, she sometimes couldn't help but feel a small amount of sympathy toward the poor things. Perhaps that was the point.

Right after she had landed, something drew Chell's attention to her right. Instinctively she turned her head and found herself looking straight into GLaDOS's artificial blue eyes through the glass wall that had made its reappearance. The android had a self-satisfied smirk on her face which made the girl's blood boil. _"Was she waiting for me?"_ she tried to figure out, slightly confused by the situation.

The next challenge was identical for both participants and it lay right in front of them. It was basically yet another pit with acid at the bottom, but this one was over three times as wide as the corridor had been up to this point. There were three small platforms hovering over the drop, each supported by a single metal pillar that extended all the way down to the bottom. What made the situation different from before was that each platform was a few meters lower than the previous but fortunately they weren't placed nearly as far from one another horizontally. The last platform had a portalable surface and some distance away from it on the wall was a glass window with a small hole in the middle. From her viewpoint Chell couldn't see what was beyond the glass, but she had no doubts about there being another white surface somewhere behind it.

Right after Chell had noticed her rival, the android fearlessly performed a huge half-backflip to the first platform landing on one hand. Without stopping, she continued her motion and launched herself to the next one with just the strength of her free hand, this time landing on her feet. Right as the AI made her last backflip and fired a portal on the ground while still in the air, Chell made her first jump to the closest platform having stopped just mindlessly admiring the android's display. Just as she landed, she heard a horrible noise from above and quickly glanced up. The panels in the ceiling had been pulled aside revealing rows of spike plates which started coming down fast.

GLaDOS, who had just landed on the unconnected portal, fired her other portal through the small opening while balancing on one hand. Managing to apparently hit another portal-conducting surface, her portal opened and the android fell through leaving Chell's sight again. _"Show-off,"_ the girl frowned, shooting a portal of her own on the third platform and made her second jump.

With the long fall boots it didn't really matter if the drop between the raised panels was a couple of meters or ten meters. The difference in elevation did however make it difficult to estimate how far you needed to jump and also made it tricky to not fall over the edge because of your forward momentum even when you managed to land successfully. Chell's first jump had gone without a hitch, but now she was dealing with the added pressure of avoiding getting impaled by the spikes that were already much closer to her than she would have preferred.

The fact that she was nervous and rushing showed immediately in the girl's performance when she had to struggle to keep her balance after landing on the second panel. Without any time to prepare for the last jump she was simply forced to jump again as soon as she was able because the spikes were already practically kissing the top of her head. She wasn't sure if the last jump was going to be good enough to land her safely, but to her relief that turned out to be to case.

Immediately after her feet had touched down, Chell knelt down to keep herself safe from the death closing in from above and fired her second portal hoping it would make it through the hole in the glass. There seemed to be a large room on the other side with plenty of large white surfaces around, so if her shot could just make it through the opening it was pretty much guaranteed to land on something where it would stick. However, when against all her expectations the orange orb hit the edge of the opening and dissipated, she could feel her heart literally skip a beat.

Chell pulled the trigger for a second time but again she missed the hole just barely. In panic, she swiftly lay down so low she was virtually hugging the ground, held her breath hoping it would help her accuracy, and fired her portal gun one more time. There wouldn't be enough time for a fourth shot, so everything now relied on this portal's trajectory, which had become fixed the moment she squeezed the trigger.

Feeling that her fate was no longer in her hands, Chell closed her eyes and prepared for whatever was going to happen. If she was going to die here, it would probably happen in less than a second. Getting savagely penetrated by extremely sharp spikes would definitely not be painless, far from it, but hopefully it would at least be quick. Chell's heart was beating so hard in her chest it felt like someone was pounding something inside her with a hammer. Then suddenly her body jerked and a thought the girl assumed might be her last ran through her mind, _"Is this it?"_

Her body was filled with a weird, yet not entirely unfamiliar sensation. The feeling went on for what felt like a very, very long time. _"Is this the afterlife?"_ Chell inquired in her thoughts and was immediately presented with an answer when she heard a satisfying hydraulic sound coming from her boots and felt her knees bend a little.

Chell opened her eyes. She was standing in a spacious chamber surrounded by a sea of white. Somehow the familiar setting made her feel more relaxed. _"Still alive,"_ she noted, relieved. _"What was I even expecting? Of course I'm alive! I have to beat GLaDOS, no matter what."_ The girl allowed a smile to appear on her lips and almost gave a little cry of joy but then realized she was in the presence of the supercomputer and managed to restrain herself.

Some of Chell's newfound good spirits were however washed away when the announcer's composed yet at the same time very overenthusiastic voice filled the room: "Warning! The following test chambers must be completed within the given time limit. Once the time runs out, the exit door will be permanently sealed and you'll be trapped forever. Good luck."

_"Great,"_ thought the girl, who was already examining the room's layout. She had fallen right next to the exit, and above the door she could see a timer which started running down from three minutes when the announcer was finished with his announcement. This was the reinstated test subject's first proper test chamber in three months, so it took Chell a moment to recall how to dissect these puzzles – how to determine what was important and what wasn't.

The room had three buttons right by the exit which all needed to have something on them in order to open the door. It didn't take a genius to figure out that there had to be three cubes somewhere in the room, and since there were none on the ground they had to be somewhere higher up placed in three of the numerous recesses that were in the walls.

Near Chell's starting position was an alcove that could be portalled to. The rest of the edges in the room, however, didn't seem to have portal-conducting panels and were also all – apart from one – located higher than the recess in question. The floor and the walls up to the height of the lowest two niches were completely white, but the rest of the quite tall room consisted mostly of non-portalable surfaces. There were also four raised platforms at the other end of the room which was slightly longer in one direction than the other. They were however situated so high that the girl had absolutely no apprehension as to how to get up to them right now.

With a quick glance Chell noted that GLaDOS's chamber appeared to be similar to hers but they both needed to use slightly different methods to retrieve the boxes. The AI had already placed her first weighted storage cube on an Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button and was on her way to acquire the next one. Not letting her rival's lead discourage her, the girl fired a portal on the ceiling of the accessible alcove and another one under her feet. The next moment she was already standing up there and she noticed that the first box was waiting for her directly across the room on the same height as her.

Chell placed a portal right underneath the indentation with the cube and jumped off firing a portal below her. Preserving her momentum, she catapulted out of the other portal and landed cleanly on the other side. She tossed the cube down on the main floor and studied what options she had available to her from this position. On the opposite wall considerably higher than the two edges she'd been on, was an angled panel which she couldn't place a portal on while she was in the first recess. Chell hadn't memorized the locations of the other niches, but she thought it was logical to assume that that panel would fling her to the next one. It was obviously meant to be used for something. There was actually another alcove a couple meters above the panel, but it didn't seem to have a cube in it.

The girl put a portal on the angled panel, being barely able to do so because of its high placement, and threw herself into the portal she'd used to get to the second edge. But when she came flying out of the portal at high speed, Chell encountered something she hadn't expected: Instead of an alcove there was another slightly less angled panel in front of her. It was positioned higher than the panel she'd just come out of, but because her velocity was high enough relative to the distance between the two walls, she was definitely going to hit it.

Without much time to think, Chell fired a random portal at the white surface, not knowing which of her previous two portals she was going to come out of. Immediately after she'd traveled through the hole, there was a change in the direction of gravity and her long fall boots started to reorient her in the air. Even though Chell was still trying to find her bearings, those two things told her that she had come out of the portal on the floor of the chamber, not the first angled panel.

_"What do I do now? Did I botch this up already?"_ pondered the girl perplexed, unsure what she should have done in the unexpected situation. During the few seconds she spent first going up and then back down again, she couldn't figure out what she was supposed to do with the second panel, and then she found herself rocketing out of it with considerable speed. To her relief, Chell realized that by doing nothing else she had found the solution to her problem. She **had** made a mistake, but she could still redeem herself and avoid having to start over if she acted quickly and made sure to place the right-colored portal.

Trying to keep her head cool, the girl put the same color portal she'd just exited on the angled surface she was now headed toward and was once again thrown in the air near the indentation where the first cube had been. When she came back out of the portal she'd placed, Chell this time didn't do anything and merely landed securely on the second panel, losing all her kinetic energy in the process. That didn't matter, though. Chell had been a bit too focused on trying to preserve her momentum; she understood that now.

When she had flown out of the panel she was now standing on, the girl had noticed that it was angled directly at the recess above the other panel, but she didn't have enough speed to reach it. The panel itself, however, was situated much higher than the lowest alcoves she had used to gain the momentum she had been using up to this point. A jump from this height would definitely be enough to fling her to the niche in front of her.

Even though Chell knew she was on a time limit, she gave herself a couple of seconds to recover from spending so much time constantly either falling or flying through the air. After coming to a full stop she now felt a little lightheaded, as any average person probably would have. Not that Chell was just your average woman.

The not-so-average woman in question stood on the very edge of the panel and placed a blue portal on it. She then jumped without fear from the height that would have, with an almost absolute certainty, killed a person, and she did it with a broad smile on her face. Only a few feet before she would've hit the ground did she finally fire her orange portal. Falling from great heights was always exciting for Chell, but tempting fate a little every now and then made things even more exhilarating. Even if she was both trying to make it through the tests alive and beat GLaDOS at the same time, that didn't mean she couldn't have a little fun as well. If she were to let her motivation drop too low, she might not make it through the race.

Chell fell through the portal and it catapulted her into the empty alcove just like she had predicted. _"When am I going to get the next cube?"_ she wondered, her front a bit sore from slamming agains the wall. _"Surely I must be getting close."_ When she turned around to view the chamber, it turned out her supposition was correct. On the opposite wall at the same height as her but a lot to the right was an indentation with a storage cube in it. Chell didn't need to think about what to do next: Lazily she threw a portal below the alcove with the cube, jumped down, placed the other portal beneath herself, and landed neatly right next to the heavy object she needed in order to proceed.

The box went flying over the edge and hit the floor hard making a loud thump that the girl found very satisfying. _"One more to go,"_ she proclaimed to herself and grinned. The reason she was grinning wasn't the fact that she only needed to get one more cube, although that was part of the reason. The real reason was that she knew **how** to get to it. The lowest one of the four raised platforms she'd seen when she first surveyed the test chamber was directly across from where Chell was now standing and she could easily place a portal on it. So she did just that.

The happy expression quickly faded from the girl's face as she stepped over to the edge and looked down feeling a bit nervous. The fact that she knew exactly what to do was slightly comforting but what she needed to do next was going to be tricky nonetheless.

After taking a deep breath and holding it in for a couple of seconds, Chell quickly exhaled and jumped off the edge. With precision she shot her other portal on the ground and was thrown high above the lowest platform with an incredible starting velocity. While at the apex of her flight, she looked down, located the second platform, and moved the portal from the bottom of the chamber on it. Once she'd been launched out of the hole she'd just placed, Chell moved that portal over to the next panel. It took the girl a brief moment before she realized her mistake. Just in the nick of time she managed to fire the opposite color portal beneath herself and avoid losing her momentum. However, because of her mishap she wasn't ready to act when the opportunity to place her portal on the last platform came, and she had to fall through the linked portal two more times before she had a chance to try again.

Now much more prepared to take the shot, Chell succeeded in landing the portal without difficulty. It was even the correct color this time. Just a moment later the girl was traveling up again. She focused her mind and got ready to place the next portal. The platform wasn't close to any walls, so the only way she was going to be able to get anywhere was via a portal.

Slightly before Chell had lost all of her upward velocity, an alcove came to her eye level. It had the last cube in it! The girl had expected the floor under the box to be portal-accepting, but that was not the case. Luckily that wasn't a problem; the back wall was white as the Moon. With a confident shot Chell placed the other end of her personal wormhole behind the final cube and started waiting for what was going to happen next with excitement. She knew exactly how things were going to play out and to her this was a very satisfying way to retrieve the last piece required to solve the puzzle and finally move onward.

Once the girl was a couple feet higher than the last recess, she came to a full stop for the briefest of moments and then started falling back towards the center of the Earth. She kept accelerating until she passed through the interface that linked the two locations in the room to one another and hit the weighted storage cube hard with her feet sending it flying. The impact decelerated Chell enough to prevent her from slamming into the opposite wall and caused her to follow a trajectory similar to the cube's, although hers had a slightly steeper angle.

As always, the long fall boots aligned the young woman's feet with the ground and after having just lost most of her velocity in one direction, she now started gaining speed in another, namely towards the earth. Together the human and her inanimate companion traveled downward for a couple of seconds, finally hitting the floor at almost exactly the same time. The only difference between the two of them was that, where the box struck the ground violently with the impact sending it spinning uncontrollably in an unpredictable direction, Chell landed effortlessly and was already running almost immediately after her feet had touched the ground.

While making her way after the cube, the girl placed a portal on a wall panel closest to one of the three buttons by the exit and her other right where she predicted the cube to land at the end of its bounce. The box fell neatly through the hole and Chell followed it just moments later. Picking up the cube with her portal gun, she ran the short distance over to the first button. Once by the apparatus, the girl made sure she had come to a perfect stop before she disengaged the portal gun's zero-point energy field allowing the cube to fall straight down and on its intended target. Without wasting any time Chell used portals to bring the two other cubes sitting on the chamber floor right by the remaining buttons.

Once all of the buttons had a box resting on them, the exit door opened unceremoniously allowing Chell her first glimpse of the next test chamber. She had seen GLaDOS finish her own chamber about twenty seconds earlier and the android seemed to be already doing something with excursion funnels in the next one. Chell's side didn't have funnels and appeared to involve hard light bridges instead.

The next exit could already be observed through the doorway. Just like this one, it had a small screen above it for displaying the time limit, but it wasn't counting down yet. The timer in the first room also hadn't stopped even when Chell had opened the door, which meant she still needed to leave the room before the time ran out. That wasn't going to be a problem, though, because she had finished the test with roughly forty seconds to spare and she was standing practically right next to the exit. The three-minute deadline hadn't been too tight, but if the girl had made a huge mistake at some point, the outcome could have easily been entirely different.

The thought of getting trapped inside one of these chambers made a shiver move through Chell's body. She couldn't really say she knew anything about what it was like to die of dehydration, but it would surely be an awful and excruciatingly slow way to go. The worst thing about the whole thing would definitely be knowing what was coming and being forced to just wait for the inevitable, unable to do anything about it. Well, there was always the option to… _expedite_ the process, but Chell didn't even want to think about that.

From these thoughts a question arose to the girl's mind: Was being trapped in a test chamber even a fair punishment for both of the participants? GLaDOS couldn't die of thirst or hunger. But then it occurred to Chell that the android body had to have a power source of some kind, and once it eventually ran out GLaDOS would become just a lifeless high-tech doll, nothing more. However, judging by the AI's performance so far, it started to seem more and more unlikely GLaDOS was going to fail at solving one of her own tests, even if she had blocked the solutions like she'd claimed.

Chell walked through the door and it closed shut behind her once she was a few feet away from it. The clock above the next exit started running immediately – this time from four minutes. _"Here we go again,"_ thought the girl and began working on the puzzle presented to her.

The second and third chamber went almost as well as the first one, but after that Chell found it harder and harder to keep up with the clock. Almost every new chamber extended the time limit from what it had been in the previous room but the tests also steadily continued to increase in difficulty and complexity. The young woman found herself forced to move at a very rapid pace. She had to think about the solutions while sprinting to push buttons, fetching cubes, and making extremely precise portal placements while flying over large pools of acid and avoiding turrets.

What made matters worse was that she was given no time between the tests to catch her breath and her brain was yelling for some rest from being forced to constantly work overtime. She gave the tests her all but still the AI continued to increase her lead by twenty to thirty seconds every room. Like before, the desire to not lose to GLaDOS helped Chell push herself slightly beyond what she would have thought herself being capable of, but still that wasn't enough to keep up with the android, let alone complete the chambers faster than her.

By the time GLaDOS finished her seventh chamber, she was already roughly three minutes ahead of the human, who even made a mistake because of the increasing pressure and that almost ended up costing her her life when she barely managed to leap through the exit just as the door was sealed behind her. The eight chamber had a six-minute time limit, but when Chell arrived there, she found GLaDOS standing on her side of the glass just observing the tall room having done nothing toward actually completing the test.

The test was very similar for both of the women with some small alterations to make the solutions unique. The chamber-lock was located at the very top of the room and under it was a lift which based on the lines connected to it required power from one super-colliding super button to raise it halfway in the air and additional power from another to bring it all the way up to the exit. In addition the door itself needed to be powered to open it. The puzzle shared some similarities with one of the tests Wheatley had made Chell solve, but the details differed in many ways.

A couple seconds after the girl had entered the room, GLaDOS turned toward her wearing a smug expression which infuriated Chell beyond measure, and then returned her attention back to her side of the glass again. As the human began to work on getting the exit powered, she could hear the AI placing two portals on her side. Without compromising what she was doing, Chell managed to monitor the android's actions with quick glances every few seconds.

It puzzled her that GLaDOS didn't seem to be going for any of the buttons or boxes and instead spent her time making portal placements that seemed surprisingly complicated and appeared to have nothing to do with how the test was intended to be solved. But the next thing she knew, the synthetic woman was standing on top of the landing next to the exit and she had even somehow managed to pick up one of the cubes along the way.

GLaDOS noticed that the girl could see her and dropped the cube through a portal she'd placed on an angled surface beneath her. She then used portals to guide the box around the room without letting it ever hit the ground, although twice she intentionally caused it to hit a wall in order to get it where she wanted it to go. None of what the AI was doing made any sense to Chell, but after a series of weird tricks the box miraculously landed right on the button, even though it had seemed impossible to achieve without taking it there in person.

The door behind GLaDOS opened and Chell was unable to hide the amazement on her face. Seemingly pleased, the android blew her a kiss. _"Cheater,"_ was all the girl would've wanted to say to that.

The AI hadn't actually broken any rules but in Chell's mind she still hadn't completed the chamber in a proper manner either. Granted, the method she had used was much more complicated than solving the puzzle the "correct" way, but it was also a solution no human could have possibly come up with – at least not within six minutes. But that was precisely the point of GLaDOS's little stunt. She wasn't human and believed that made her superior in every way. However, instead of managing to discourage the girl, every attempt the android made to try to prove her superiority only fortified Chell's resolve to best the AI regardless of how much effort it would take.

As Chell continued working on solving the puzzle on her side, she noticed to her surprise that GLaDOS made no attempt to leave her chamber. Only when the time limit was about to run out did she casually wave her hand to the girl and calmly walk through the doorway just before it closed.

_"Is she trying to give me time to catch up?"_ Chell wondered, not entirely sure what to make of GLaDOS's behavior. _"I don't need a handicap."_ Based on the current situation that didn't seem to be exactly true, of course, and at the back of her mind Chell knew that to be the case, but she didn't want to even consider the possibility that GLaDOS couldn't be beaten.

The AI was arrogant and overconfident. At some point it was going to bite her in the ass and she was going to make a mistake. She had underestimated the human several times in the past and it had led both to her death and being temporarily dethroned by Wheatley as the master of Aperture – in that order, which any outsider would have probably found somewhat perplexing. Moreover, based on GLaDOS's behavior in the past she didn't seem to be able to keep herself collected when things didn't go as she had planned. Chell was certain that if she managed to get ahead of the android she would start rushing and making mistakes because of the pressure.

To Chell's delight she was able to complete the eight test chamber well before the literal deadline – about a minute after GLaDOS. However, to her surprise she found that instead of yet another test chamber the next area was actually another long corridor which was based more on speed, endurance and quick reflexes than mere brainpower alone.

The girl was already tired from being constantly on the move while trying to solve the tests but she still had energy in reserve and willpower to keep her going, so she started sprinting after GLaDOS whom she could see ahead of her trying to advance while dodging bullets fired at her by a surprisingly large number of turrets. The expression on the artificial woman's face was quite tense as she tried to navigate through the obstacle course she had created herself, and seeing that brought satisfaction to Chell. _"Try to remember that they don't hate you."_

The hallway was much wider than the one before, but also a lot longer and much deadlier. The two of them had to face mashy spike plates, thermal discouragement beams and loads of turrets. None of them were even crap turrets, which Chell would have preferred any day of the week. They also had to use portals more often but not always to get themselves from one place to another.

A section that wasn't very difficult to pass, but still managed to make Chell feel very uncomfortable, was the one she was probably going to remember the best. It involved her running through a long and narrow passage with turrets protected by a grill on both sides and spike plates coming down at her from above. She had to alternate the placement of her orange portal between two panels at the end to keep herself protected from the turrets using a light bridge that was going through her blue one. It took the turrets long enough to reacquire their target that the method worked, but having to constantly keep placing portals while running at the same time was very unnerving knowing that even one missed shot would probably cost the girl her life or at the very least lead to serious injury.

After the second corridor the two had to solve a second set of test chambers which were much harder than the previous ones and started to incorporate more deadly traps and combining different testing elements in the same room. Chell wasn't sure how she managed to do it, but she found herself able to keep up with the android and perhaps even gain a couple of seconds here and there. Still, it seemed unlikely she was going to take the lead any time soon. It didn't look like GLaDOS was intentionally going slowly, so perhaps the increasing danger of death was affecting her and causing her to do things more cautiously. Whichever the case, Chell was just glad to have a fighting chance again.

Just like the first time around, there were eight rooms total and when the girl ran through the final door she found herself in a very narrow corridor with a relatively low ceiling. The passage was perhaps a couple hundred meters long, but what made it different from the previous ones was the fact that there was only one door at the end and it stood exactly at the center of the two parallel courses, right where the glass separating the two should have continued.

_"Is that the end? Is that the exit?"_ Chell thought and started sprinting as fast as she possibly could. She was completely soaked in sweat at this point and more tired than she had even been in her entire life, but the prospect of finishing this nightmarish trial and having a chance to actually sit down and rest was well worth the last bits of strength she had left.

GLaDOS was running like the wind, still ahead of the girl, but somehow her lead had shrunk to around twenty meters, which in terms of time was hardly anything at all. Chell hadn't even noticed she had been this close to being tied with the android, which made her want to slap herself for not paying more attention.

As the two ran frantically toward the goal, the sound coming from their boots and the girl's heavy breathing were practically the only things that could be heard. But then suddenly Chell could hear a third sound join in. It seemed to be coming from behind them but from GLaDOS's side. Turning her head slightly to the side the girl was able to observe what was making the racket.

The floor panels on the AI's side had started retracting one at a time at an alarming rate starting from the beginning and seemed to be advancing faster than the android was capable of running. From the opening that had appeared Chell could see that there was acid at the bottom of the drop beneath the floor. Just after the girl had been able to process all that information in her mind, she could hear the same starting to happen behind her as well.

_"This is not good."_ Chell turned her eyes back straight ahead.

Chell was actually sprinting slightly slower than GLaDOS, which made her want to pick up her pace but she was already moving as fast as she could, so she focused on at least maintaining her current speed at all costs. The end was approaching quickly, but so was the loud mechanical noise which represented quick and painful death. GLaDOS had pulled slightly farther from Chell, which made her extremely anxious since the retracting floor panels were already practically underneath the android's heels, meaning they couldn't be very far from her own either.

Even though it was extremely close, the AI somehow managed to cross the finish line barely ahead of the doom pursuing her and confetti dropped down from the ceiling. As the crushing reality of defeat struck Chell, the ground was literally taken from underneath her feet mere meters before she herself reached the goal. She started falling but thanks to her forward momentum she came crashing agains the edge of the platform and managed to grab hold of it with her free hand.

Quickly the girl threw her portal gun on the floor and brought her right arm to help her left which was just about to fail her. Both of her hands were sweaty and the surface was very smooth providing very little friction. Chell desperately tried to pull herself up but her hold was slipping, her entire body was aching, and she was panicking which didn't help things at all.

On the surface she had tried to keep herself fit but she had been foolish and concentrated on her legs and neglected her arms for the most part figuring running was much more important for survival. Normally she wouldn't have had any problems in this kind of situation, but after well over an hour of running, jumping and dodging bullets – not to mention all the other _fun_ things GLaDOS had included as part of the course – the girl just couldn't muster the strength required to pull herself to safety.

Chell could hear her heartbeat pounding in her head and her breathing was even more intense than before. To make things even worse, some sweat got into her eyes which stung and made it hard for her to see. Naturally she wanted to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand, but that wasn't really an option in this situation so she was simply forced to endure it.

As the girl just hung there trying to frantically figure out how to escape the situation before the last of her strength was going to run out, she could see GLaDOS walk over to the edge looking down at her. Unlike Chell would have expected, the expression on her face wasn't that of mockery but it seemed more like she was observing her with genuine interest. What did she want? Or was she waiting for something?

For what felt like a small eternity, the two just kept staring at one another. Then the android kneeled down. _"What is she doing..? No! She isn't going to–"_

"Do you need assistance?"

The words had come completely unexpected and made Chell snap immediately out of her thoughts. Her brain had barely had time to decipher the simple sentence before she was already nodding to accept the offer. Her arms were about to fail her at any second and she was willing to take any help she could get at this point – even from GLaDOS.

The android closed her fingers around the girl's wrists but not tightly enough to take a proper hold of her. "You can let go now," she then stated simply. Chell didn't know if she could trust the AI or if this was going to be the last mistake she ever made, but she figured that if she let go, at least it was her choice and not something that happened because she was too weak to hold on any longer. That probably wouldn't be much consolation if she died, but at least it felt like the more honorable way to go.

Chell let go. She began falling and felt a sensation completely foreign to her in her stomach. It was hard to say what that feeling was exactly, but given the circumstance it could have very well been the sensation you get when you know you are about to die and can't do anything about it. Then, as quickly as she had started falling, Chell came to a perfect stop as the artificial woman's hands closed around her wrists securely but not too tightly to feel uncomfortable.

Slowly the android got back on her feet while holding her arms at roughly the same angle and then raised them so that the slightly shorter human's eyes were at the same level as her own. To Chell's discomfort GLaDOS stayed in this position and just kept eyeballing her test subject. Even without looking down the girl was very aware of the pool of deadly acid beneath her and she knew she was completely at the AI's mercy at this point. If GLaDOS let go now, there would be nothing the girl could possibly do to save herself.

Fortunately Chell's fears turned out to be groundless when the android eventually turned a full hundred and eighty degrees and lowered her so that her feet were resting on solid ground again. It was quite possible that she hadn't even held the girl over the pit for more than a couple of seconds and it had just felt like minutes. Chell's mind was such a mess at the moment that her perception of time wasn't necessarily all that reliable.

The android let go of the girl's hands and they both lowered their arms to their sides. GLaDOS kept staring at Chell, who couldn't help but stare back at the AI. Countless thoughts were whirling in the girl's head, but she couldn't focus on even one of them, so she just kept looking blankly into the blue optics in front of her, unsure what to feel. GLaDOS had just save her life, but then on the other hand she was the sole reason Chell had been in danger in the first place, so was there any reason for her to feel grateful?

While the girl tried to sort through all the mixed emotions, random small memories from the race, and what felt like hundreds of small and not so small questions she would've liked answered, her gaze drifted slowly from the android's eyes past her shoulder. That's when she snapped out of her daze and realized what the current situation was. She was standing on solid ground and GLaDOS was situated right between her and the acid pit with her heels practically right at the edge. All Chell needed to do–

"You know, competing against you just now made me realize something: I thought I wanted to prove once and for all that artificial beings are better than humans, but now I understand that what I actually wanted was to see you win. Well, I wanted to see you **try**, to be more precise. But you couldn't even manage that much, could you? Calling this a close race would require me to redefine the definition of the word 'close'. You couldn't even make it across the finish line without my help! Although, at least you got **to** the finish line. I guess that's something."

_"She wanted me to win?"_ If Chell had been confused before, her brain was totally scrambled now. She kept staring at the android like an idiot.

"So I've decided we are going to do this again. Not immediately of course – after you've gotten some practice. Compared to Blue's performance you didn't do horribly, but you weren't that much better than Orange her first time and you definitely didn't meet the performance estimates I simulated based on the data I already had on you. The test results from today say you aren't the same monster who killed me, but you're still a horrible person."

The corners of GLaDOS's lips curved up barely noticeably. Normally Chell would have definitely reacted to a comment like that in some way, but she was still too stumped to do anything and simply kept staring at the android.

"I assumed that the desire to win alone would be enough encouragement to make you give it your all, but apparently I was mistaken. It seems obvious now that I should have offered a more physical reward for finishing first. Glory and sense of accomplishment don't seem to mean anything to you, so tell you what: If you ever manage to beat me, I promise there'll be… _cake_." GLaDOS gave Chell a look the girl didn't know how to interpret and started walking toward the exit picking up her ASHPD along the way.

For a moment Chell just stood there staring at the huge drop in front of her and at the pool of acid at the bottom.

"Are you coming?" yelled the android from beyond the doorway. "I'd like to be able to seal this section off and start disassembling it so it can be used to create new test chambers."

Chell gave the course one last look and then made her way into the next room bringing her own portal gun with her. The door closed behind her and she could hear how everything immediately started moving around to reallocate the huge amount of space and resources used to create the long continuous course they'd just spent well over an hour in.

GLaDOS was patiently waiting for the girl inside an elevator which was identical in design to the ones Chell had used when she was last at Aperture. She stepped inside the tube and after the doors had closed they started moving up. As Chell was standing face to face and almost chest to chest with the android, she really hoped GLaDOS had made revisions to the elevator design or reverted back to the previous, much roomier ones.

As the two just stood there in awkward silence, Chell started to become extremely aware of the fact that she and all her clothes were completely drenched in her own sweat. If the elevator had any sort of ventilation, she honestly couldn't tell. The air seemed to stand perfectly still inside the small enclosed space and the girl couldn't imagine feeling any more uncomfortable than she did right at that moment. Her heart rate was finally starting to come down but she was still feeling very hot and the two of them were actually causing the temperature inside the glass tube to go up, which made things even worse.

Chell wanted to look away from GLaDOS, but she found herself unable to do so. The android's constant gaze was simply too intense for the girl to look away from. On top of that she couldn't figure out **why** GLaDOS kept staring at her. Surely she'd seen her face a hundred times before.

Then finally the AI spoke, "Your eyes…"

_"What about my eyes?"_ Chell wondered, confounded.

"They are… grey."

The girl eased a little. She didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or hit her head against the elevator glass. _"It took you **this** long to realize my eyes are grey?"_

"The incompetent moron who filled the basic information for your personnel file marked your eye color as blue. I will need to fix that. All stored information related to testing must be as accurate as possible. There. It's done."

The elevator fell silent again.

Even though the AI wasn't looking at Chell as intently as before, that did very little to easy the girl's discomfort. _"Is this ride ever going to end?"_ Minutes passed but to the girl they felt more like hours. Normally after a test she would have been looking at the view outside the elevator, but now it was being obstructed by the very attractive female android whose very existence would have boggled Chell's mind if it weren't for the fact that the entire underground facility seemed like it had been pulled straight out of some weird science fiction story. There was of course always the option to turn around to look through the glass behind her, but turning her back to her captor wasn't something Chell had any intentions of doing.

The girl had never imagined she'd enjoy hearing the AI's voice, but when GLaDOS finally spoke again Chell actually found she preferred that to the dead silence.

"I just realized I've neglected to tell you about the arrangements of your stay here at Aperture. I've instructed Orange and Blue to prepare a room for you in one of the dormitories intended for full-time employees. They should be done by now."

Chell raised her eyebrows a minuscule amount. The concept of a room with a bed in it sounded really inviting in her current state.

"The days from Monday to Thursday you will spend testing in order to improve both your physical and cognitive performance. I already have the cooperative testing initiative so I don't specifically need you for testing, but the data collected from you will be useful nonetheless. I will wake you up every morning at 7:30. According to the large amounts of information I have on humans, they perform better under testing conditions when they have been sufficiently nourished. Therefore you will be given three meals per day. Because of your weight-related issues in the past, I considered limiting the number of meals to only two, but ultimately I felt it might not be enough. I hope you won't make me regret my decision." GLaDOS gave Chell a brief smile, but she didn't believe it was any more genuine than the android's lips were.

"You'll have thirty minutes to eat your breakfast; testing begins at eight sharp. At noon you'll have a half-hour break during which you can use the facilities and will be provided with a supplementary lunch to aid you through the rest of the tests. Each day you will be presented with fifty test chambers to complete. You'll be done for the day either when you finish the last test or once it's four o'clock, whichever comes first. In the latter case you must still complete the chamber you are currently in after which the elevator will take you back outside the testing area. Dinner will be served after the completion of the day's activities."

_"**Fifty** chambers? Brilliant."_ Unfortunately the word "brilliant" made Chell think of someone she'd rather not, so she focused all of her attention back to what GLaDOS was telling her.

"Each Friday you and I will repeat what we did today but naturally on a different course. We are going to keep doing this until you are able to reach the end faster than me, which is never going to happen, but knowing your tenacity you'll try to prove me wrong, isn't that right?" GLaDOS gave Chell an inquiring look but she wasn't actually expecting an answer from the girl, so she continued, "Saturdays are reserved for other varying Enrichment Center activities besides testing. I will tell you more about the content of the day each Saturday when I wake you up."

Chell had absolutely no idea what those other activities could possibly be but she doubted GLaDOS wanted to form a knitting club and drink tea with her.

"Lastly, because I'm such a generous person, you can have Sundays off. I'm just kidding. Not about you having Sundays off, about me being a generous person. I actually need one day per week to throughly go through all the test data accumulated during the week and process it so that it can be efficiently archived. And before you volunteer to help me, I'll just tell it to you straight and say that you wouldn't be any help at all. Thanks for the offer anyway."

The thought of offering to help GLaDOS was something that would never cross Chell's mind, but having at least Sundays off did sound pretty sweet. Wait, what was she thinking? She should have been concentrating on figuring out a way to escape the facility, but instead here she was enjoying a bone the person who'd brought her here against her will had thrown her. The girl would have slapped herself if GLaDOS hadn't been present.

However, it wasn't like Chell had neglected any opportunities to attempt an escape. There simply hadn't been any. Not unless one counted when she could have–

"There's something I must ask you."

Chell snapped back into the real world startled by the AI who stayed quiet for a moment before she continued suddenly.

"Tell me, do humans find the smell of sweat attractive?"

The question was definitely something Chell hadn't expected to ever hear from the android's lips and it brought her discomfort to a new high, especially because she had no idea why the AI had stated the question. She didn't know if the answer was necessarily always no, but based on her current state she decided to shake her head slowly.

"Good, because I find the smell hovering inside this elevator most unpleasant. My databases do not contain any information on different scents, so I don't have any kind of reference I could use to help me interpret the signals my olfactory sensors are sending me. I'm glad to learn the impression I'd gotten was correct, even though that does nothing about the stench itself."

Normally Chell tried to ignore all of GLaDOS's less than kind remarks, but being reminded of the lack of her personal hygiene made the girl even more aware of her state of discomfort. _"It's easy for you to complain, you don't sweat."_

It however turned out that she had spoken– thought, too soon, for the supercomputer had more to say: "I suggest you take a shower once we reach your floor. There are also several sets of fresh clothes similar to what you are wearing now waiting for you in your room. Change into those and leave your old clothes wherever you please. They have been exposed to your bodily secretions for far too long without being properly cleansed, so Orange will fetch them tomorrow while you are testing and simply throw them into the incinerator. No sense keeping garbage like that lying around."

Chell had barely heard the last part of what GLaDOS had said. Her eyes were sparkling and she did little to try to hide it from the android. _"A shower?"_

For a moment the AI stood there watching the girl and slowly an uninhibited smile pulled her lips upward. "Oh, that's right. You haven't taken a shower in a loooooong time, have you? Well, enjoy yourself then."

That was exactly what the young woman intended to do. As far as she was concerned, she had never actually taken a shower, only bathed in rivers and lakes. On the surface she had often fantasized of what it would feel like to stand in a shower and have hot water running all over your skin, but she wasn't sure if what she imagined that to feel like was based on actual memories and experiences, or just her own imagination. …There was going to be hot water, right? GLaDOS wouldn't make her take an ice cold shower, would she? Even though the temperature inside the elevator was still as high as it had been moments before, a chill ran down the girl's spine.

The elevator fell silent once again and steadily continued its seemingly never ending trip up towards its destination. Finally, a couple of minutes later it came to a stop and the doors opened. Chell, who had actually started thinking she'd be spending the rest of her life trapped inside the contraption with her least favorite android, almost couldn't believe her eyes. She took a breath of fresh air and GLaDOS gestured encouragingly with her hand for her to step outside the elevator. Not needing to be told twice, Chell did just that and turned around when she noticed the AI had stayed in the elevator.

"I have work to do. You should be able to find your way from here. If you can't, I'm not sure how you've made it this far," she simply stated as the doors closed and the elevator continued its journey up.

Once GLaDOS was gone, Chell found herself standing alone in an empty and silent corridor somewhere in a part of Aperture she'd never been to before. The corridor wasn't very long and at the other end of it opposite the elevator stood a door. From there the hallway continued in two directions with one corridor going to the left and the other to the right. Chell walked over to the door and noticed that both hallways were full of similar doors as far as the eye could see. What made this door stand out, however, was the large gold-colored plaque attached to it bearing the word "Chell" on it.

The girl ran her fingers slowly over the metal surface. This was the first actual acknowledgement that her name was indeed Chell. _"No last name, huh? Figures…"_ Still, the girl was somewhat relieved to find out that the name she'd assumed to be hers was actually real and not just something she'd made up to try to soften the shock of having lost her memory by having at least one thing to cling to.

The black letters had been somehow printed onto the surface and would probably come off if enough force was applied, but still the fact that the room had been designated to Chell by marking it with her name was a lot more satisfying than just having GLaDOS tell her that the room opposite the elevator was hers. Not that Chell wanted to receive anything from the AI, but having an apartment that was actually given to her was much better than living in a house that was only vacant because its previous owners had departed and no one had been there to claim it for themselves.

Chell placed her hand on the handle and turned it until she could hear a click. Gently she gave the door a small push and watched as the room behind it came slowly into view. The lights were already on, so cautiously she stepped inside and after quickly inspecting the bedroom part of the apartment she opened the bathroom door and checked it for any… surprises. There were none, so quickly the involuntary test subject slammed the door to the hallway shut, locked it, and put the door chain on. She leaned agains the door and slowly slid down on the floor sighing in relief. There was no doubt in Chell's mind that GLaDOS could get into this room if she wanted to, but even a false sense of security was enough to make the girl feel slightly better in her situation.

After taking a moment to relax, Chell got back up and walked into the bedroom area. The apartment's layout was similar to the one she'd woken up in after defeating GLaDOS, but thankfully it was much larger and nicer. Gone were the fake windows with strong lights behind the blinds to give a false impression of being on the surface. The furnishing was also much more eye-pleasing, although not luxurious by any stretch of the imagination. There weren't actually even that many things in the apartment but Chell found she liked the simplicity.

The most prominent thing in the room was obviously the bed. It was much wider than an average bed but still intended for one person, or at least that's what Chell assumed even though there were two pillows. The bed sheet, blanket and pillows all looked brand new, and they probably were. Next to the bed there was a small nightstand as well as an armchair and on the other side of the room a simple yet sturdy desk and a chest of drawers. Unlike most of the things Chell was used to seeing in modern Aperture, all of the furniture was made of wood and despite their age everything seemed to still be in relatively good shape.

The girl sat on the bed and unstrapped her long fall boots. She then proceeded to take off her stinky socks and let her feet rest on one of the best things about the room which was the soft and very pleasing wall-to-wall carpet. After playing with the carpet with her slightly aching toes for a bit and flexing them a little, Chell turned her gaze to the one thing she didn't quite enjoy about the room: the camera that was looking directly at her.

With a frown Chell waved to the camera, acknowledging its presence.

"It has only been a couple of minutes since we last saw each other. Greeting me in this fashion is not necessary, but I do appreciate the sentiment nonetheless. Since I'm talking to you, I could mention that I just told Blue to start sterilizing the elevator we used. Somehow the stench still persists even though you are no longer present and I find that unacceptable. This is perhaps the last thing I'd like to admit, but the moron was apparently right about one thing: humans are indeed smelly."

Without even bothering to indicate she was done talking, GLaDOS simply switched off the concealed speakers installed around the room. Chell's question whether or not the AI could access the video feeds from her cameras while just walking around in her android body had been answered before she'd even had a change to form the question in her head. Frankly she didn't actually care that much about the camera being there. She'd been monitored by cameras for a large part of the time she'd spent at Aperture, so this was nothing new. That being said, if the walls hadn't been painted charcoal gray, Chell would have definitely attempted to place a portal on the wall to detach the camera, just out of spite.

Having stretched her legs a little, the girl walked over to the drawers and checked their content. Like GLaDOS had said, they contained plenty of brand new undergarments, socks, tank tops and pants. There were also a couple of orange jumpsuits in there as well. Everything was folded neatly and arranged in an organized manner. Naturally every single article of clothing bore the Aperture Science logo on it. Next to the chest of drawers there was also a custom-made hook on the wall clearly designed for holding a portal gun. Chell hung her ASHPD on it and went into the bathroom taking a fresh set of undergarments with her.

When GLaDOS had mentioned the existence of a shower, that had made Chell excited, but what the AI had neglected to mention was that the shower in question happened to be built in conjunction with a bathtub. The girl had obviously taken note of this fact when she had inspected the apartment, but miraculously up to this point she'd been able to contain her almost overflowing enthusiasm to take not just the first hot shower in the life she could remember but her first hot bath as well.

Not wasting any time, Chell placed the clean clothes and one of the big fluffy towels that were waiting for her in the bathroom on the toilet lid and promptly peeled off all of her worn, sweaty clothes. She then undid her ponytail, stepped in the bathtub, and hastily started figuring out how to operate the damn thing. The two knobs marked with blue and red were easy enough to understand so she turned them both moderately and water started flowing from the faucet. The water wasn't quite as hot as she desired so the girl turned the red knob some more until she was satisfied. Apparently Chell's fears of having to take an ice cold shower hadn't been necessary but no one could blame her for not trusting GLaDOS.

It took a moment for the girl to solve how to make the water start flowing from the shower head above her, but when she finally did she thought she'd died and gone to heaven. The water felt slightly too hot on her skin but that was exactly how she wanted it. The burning sensation helped numb the ache she was feeling in every part of her body and also made her feel much more alive and aware of her body than usual.

Although Chell could have just stood there with the hot water running over her for hours, she wanted more. Once she felt like most of the sweat and dirt had been washed away, she stepped out of the bathtub against what her body kept telling her and placed the plug in the drain. She then switched the water to flow from the faucet again and turned both of the knobs at the same speed until the red one wouldn't turn any farther. A quick check confirmed that the water's temperature was still the same as before.

Waiting for the tub to fill was an excruciating experience. Chell was shivering all over and felt serious withdrawal symptoms from the heat. She knew that she could have just stood under the shower with the drain plugged or at least sat in the bathtub while it was filling, but she was also certain that enduring a couple minutes of discomfort and anticipation would make entering the bath an even more mind-blowing experience than it would have already been otherwise.

Once the water was finally at an appropriate level, Chell stepped back into the bathtub and slowly lowered herself in the water, taking in the new sensation. It took a moment for her body to adjust to the high temperature and the tingling to subside, but after that the girl didn't just feel like she was in heaven, she was certain she was. Her muscles started to relax immediately and her body felt almost weightless, as if it wasn't there at all. This allowed Chell to relax her mind as well, and even though at the back of her mind she knew she wasn't actually in a secure place, she allowed all worries to simply wash away from her conscious mind for the time being.

The girl closed her eyes and let her mind empty of all thought. Her breathing became deeper and she completely lost any sense of time and place. She felt like she was simply floating in a sea of blackness and for a while she felt perfectly content with that. Slowly Chell started to feel however, that even though the void felt comforting, being completely alone in there wasn't how she wanted to spend the rest of her existence, so gradually she pulled away from it and opened her eyes.

She had absolutely no idea how much time had passed but because the bath still felt hot, although not burning hot like earlier, the girl estimated that fifteen to thirty minutes might have passed but probably not longer than that. Though she could have easily spent even more time in the bath, Chell was starting to feel a bit drowsy and so she decided to remove the plug covering the drain. While the tub was still emptying she turned on the shower again and thoroughly washed her hair and body with the shampoo and soap that had been provided for her. Once she felt like she couldn't possibly be any cleaner, she stepped out of the bathtub and started drying herself with the towel.

While she was working on getting her hair dry, Chell happened to look up and froze as she found herself looking directly into the glowing red eye of a camera. In panic she made a sudden movement and her foot slipped on the wet floor causing the girl to fall backward and drop her towel. Luckily her other elbow landed in the sink and she managed to prevent herself from falling on the floor. Feeling as exposed as she possibly could, Chell struggled to get back up from her difficult position and quickly picked up the towel and wrapped it around herself once she finally managed to do that.

With her cheeks glowing bright red, the young woman stood there staring intensely at the camera and pulled the towel even tighter around herself. She kept wondering how she could have not noticed the device earlier. The problem was that the thought of even looking for a camera in the bathroom had never crossed her mind. Chell was actually so used to seeing those white spheres in Aperture that she seldom paid much attention to them, and now when she tried thinking back, she couldn't say with 100% certainty that she hadn't seen the camera at least briefly while she was washing herself.

How or why she hadn't noticed the camera didn't really matter, though. The only thing that Chell wanted to know was had GLaDOS been watching. When she'd waved to the camera in the bedroom, the AI had responded immediately, but the girl didn't know if the supercomputer was constantly aware of everything that was happening in her cameras, or if she needed to specifically bring up a feed in her mind in order to see what was going on. There were probably thousands of cameras in the massive facility after all, so it seemed doubtful she could possibly keep an eye on all of them at once.

Chell kept glaring straight into the red eye for a while waiting for some kind of response, but when nothing happened she threw one of the unused towels over the cursed device and continued drying her hair. All she could do was hope that the AI had been respectful enough to give her the privacy she deserved. If that wasn't the case, at least she appeared to be considerate enough to not say anything even though Chell had tried to make her. In the future she would have to make sure to place a towel over the camera every time she used the bathroom for anything that wasn't for the supercomputer's eyes.

While toweling herself, the girl tried to reassure herself by asking did it really matter if GLaDOS had seen her naked; she wasn't even human. Unfortunately after contemplating her answer for about half a second, Chell's answer to that question was "Hell yes!" so that attempt was a complete bust. Thankfully focusing on systematically going over every square inch of her body with the towel helped her to gradually push the incident away from her mind and work without thinking about anything for a while.

Once her hair and body were dry, Chell put on the clean underwear, combed her hair and redid her ponytail. After that she used the toilet, brushed her teeth and finally headed back into the bedroom. She sat on the bed and buried her face into her hands. _"Man, what a day. Can a person feel more tired than this?"_

The girl had only been awake for a couple of hours, but after what she'd been through Chell felt like she could sleep for a hundred years. She had already done that in the past so it wasn't even an impossible thing at all. Even though there wasn't a clock in the room, based on what GLaDOS had said about her sleeping for more than twenty hours, Chell could deduce that now was probably roughly the same time she'd gone to bed last night. Therefore this was the correct time to go to sleep even if she hadn't been as dead tired as she was.

As if being completely exhausted wasn't enough, Chell's stomach decided to growl to remind her of the fact that she hadn't eaten anything in over 24 hours. _"Gosh, I haven't been this hungry since I left Aperture. This place and hunger seem to go hand in hand. I'm a little surprised GLaDOS is actually going to give me food but naturally she didn't offer to give me something **now**, after keeping me sedated for almost a day and making me go through that gauntlet of lethal tests. My only consolation is that at least I won't know I'm starving while I'm asleep."_

The blissful calmness the bath had brought had now all but faded away thanks to the incident with the camera and Chell's body's needs, and so part of her brain was once again trying to process what had happened during the past couple of hours and the entirety of her conscious mind was just generally confused about the current situation. Managing to get a hold of her thoughts, the girl told her brain to settle down and save worrying about all of those things for tomorrow. Trying to figure out what to make of the whole situation, and especially what to make of GLaDOS's behavior, was pretty much an impossible task in her current state.

Yawning, Chell turned off the lights, lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket tightly around herself. It probably wasn't even close to being the best blanket that had ever been made, but it was without question thicker, softer and warmer than anything she had had available to her on the surface. The same could be said about the bed itself, which was more than marginally better than the one she had used in the house she'd lived in. Admittedly, for a person who had slept mostly on bare ground for the first couple of weeks of her time in the outside world, anything that even remotely resembled a bed was more than a luxury, but that didn't change the fact that right now this bed in its mediocrity felt like the best place on Earth to the girl.

Chell closed her eyes, yawned one last time, and almost instantly she was already fast asleep. As the girl slept soundly, the only thing that gave a small amount of light in the otherwise perfect darkness was the glowing red optic that never took its gaze off her.

* * *

**A/N: And that's chapter two. Let me know what you think. I'd be interested to hear how this compares to the first one: Is it better, worse, or very similar in quality? I've been working on this for over such a long period of time now that currently I honestly can't say what I think about it as a whole, although I know that the core of the plot for this chapter is something that appeals to me a great deal and is the sole reason I started publishing this story in the first place.**

**I would also like to let you know that I'm considering starting another story even though this one isn't even close to completion. This is because the story I have in mind is going to be very long and I'd like to get it started now and work on it while I always have another story running concurrently with it. I'm not sure if the next thing I publish is going to be the first first chapter for that story or the third chapter for this one, but whichever turns out to be the case, I expect both to be much, much shorter than this one (honestly), so look forward to something new from me either by the end of the year or at the beginning of next year at the latest. If things take longer than that, just know I'm working on it and feel free to ask me how**** things are progressing if you really want to know. All other questions are welcome as well and I will do my best to answer them all if you have any.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I feel like I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but once again apologies for the _criminally_ long gap between updates. I thank you for your continued patience. For those of you who don't know, I did start publishing another story like I said at the end of the last chapter and I actually went ahead and wrote two chapters for that to get it established a bit better. On top of that I started uploading chapters for the very first Portal fanfic I began writing over a year ago but didn't have the time to finish at the time and didn't start uploading until now. Those stories are called "Laws of Robotics" and "Close to the Edge" respectively if you want to go check them out after you're done with this one.**

**I get email notification directly to my phone for all new reviews, faves and follows for my stories and after I uploaded the previous chapter for this story my phone kept beeping for the next couple of weeks. I had really high hopes for chapter two, so I'm really glad it seemed to grab people's attention. I really like it personally as well so I consider it a great success.**

**But I don't want to keep you any longer, so now please go ahead and find out how the story continues.**

* * *

An ear-splittingly loud buzzer interrupted Chell's deep slumber. She bolted up to a sitting position but had difficulties opening her eyes which felt like someone had glued them together. She tried rubbing them, but to no avail.

"Good morning!" GLaDOS's voice came booming out of the speakers. It was clear from her tone that she was enjoying herself, like she almost always was when it came to talking to test subjects. "I hope you slept well because there's _plenty_ of testing to do. While you've been just snoozing away I've prepared fifty test chambers for you to complete. Orange and Blue haven't been idle either; they've been testing throughout the night and are still at it even as we speak – well, as **I** speak, but you know what I mean."

"In case you've already forgotten, we'll be competing again on Friday so there's no time for you to be slacking off. Taking into account the possibility that your brain-damaged mind might not even know what day it is, I'm only happy to enlighten you by informing you on behalf of the Enrichment Center that it is in fact Tuesday. I expect **a lot** more from you on Friday, so don't disappoint me. But even though you don't talk, I feel that I already know you better than I'd like to – perhaps even better than you know yourself. Therefore I know that you don't really care about me or what I want and are only thinking about yourself even at this very moment. The only thing that's on your mind right now is food, isn't it? Well you'll be happy to hear that breakfast has been served and is waiting for you just a short elevator ride away. Testing begins in thirty minutes regardless of whether you're done eating or not, so no goofing around."

Chell didn't want to think that GLaDOS knew her at all, but the AI was right: even though every muscle in her body was aching reminding her of yesterday's ordeal, the thing that was first and foremost on her mind right now was her hunger.

"I almost feel bad for taking time off from telling the cooperative testing initiative how wonderfully they are doing just to wake you up, so now let me get back to that."

With the supercomputer finished with what she had to say, Chell got on her feet and somewhat miraculously managed to navigate her way to the bathroom being barely able to see anything from behind her eyelids. After splashing several handfuls of water on her face the girl finally managed to get her eyes open. Looking at her sleepy face in the mirror Chell couldn't help but yawn. She didn't feel like she'd slept at all last night although she'd probably been asleep for at least seven or eight hours straight.

_"Gosh I feel dead. Does she seriously expect me to test after yesterday? What am I thinking, of course she does, this is GLaDOS after all."_

Reluctantly Chell got dressed and picked up her portal gun from the hook on the wall. At the front door she stopped with her hand on the door handle. _"Wait, what's actually stopping me from refusing to go test and just deciding to stay here in bed – apart from GLaDOS marching over to my apartment door in her new fancy android body, kicking it down and dragging me to the testing track by my ponytail of course."_ After contemplating it for a few seconds the girl looked up to see the grate covering the ventilation shaft above her. _"Right, deadly neurotoxin. Knowing GLaDOS, she wouldn't hesitate to pump this room full of neurotoxin if I tried to just barricade myself in here. She doesn't even need to make the effort of walking over here to do something about it herself."_

Deciding that after the gauntlet the night before a series of regular tests would be a piece of cake – but sadly only figuratively – Chell opened the door and walked over to the elevator which was already waiting for her. Perhaps receiving three meals a day in exchange for completing a bunch of tests wasn't such a bad deal after all. It sure was better than testing for no kind of compensation at all at least.

To the girl's relief the elevator ride was in fact short like the supercomputer had said. During it she couldn't smell even a hint of her own perspiration. Either the one GLaDOS kept referring to as Blue had succeeded in removing the stench, or the AI had simply lied about the smell being persistent, which was a more than likely option given her history of "enhancing the truth" very liberally in the past.

The involuntary test subject now found herself standing in an enormous dining hall which was large enough to accommodate at least a couple hundred people. Being completely alone in such a huge, dead silent space felt incredibly eerie and gave Chell the chills. On one of the long tables closest to the elevator a lone tray had been placed to wait for her. As she made her way over to it Chell could hear the sound of her footsteps echo off the walls and bounce around the hall. She actually felt relieved when she finally made it to the tray and sat down because she knew that for a while she'd have something else to concentrate on than the space she was in right now. No matter how hard one tried it was simply impossible to not look at a room like this and not think of the reason why it was perfectly empty like this.

Chell hardly had high standards when it came to food after being forced to eat whatever she could find in the wild for a few months. Still the breakfast on the tray failed to impress her. Not to say the food wasn't edible, it's just that it was kind of bland… and only mildly warm, not to forget there wasn't any texture to speak of. But most importantly there wasn't nearly enough of it! The plateful of baked beans, fried eggs and extremely salty sausages accompanied by an only somewhat crunchy toast and a glass of orange juice disappeared in Chell's mouth within seconds, leaving her only half full and drooling after another plate or two of the incredibly bland but still oh so delicious food.

After fruitlessly looking around the empty hall for a nonexistent second tray for a few minutes, Chell finally reluctantly accepted the fact that mealtime was over and that she'd have to test for full four hours straight before she'd be given anything else to appease her hunger. Leaving the tray where she had found it, the girl made her way back to the elevator trying to keep her footsteps from being too loud. Once she got inside the elevator Chell let out a brief sigh and held her portal gun slightly more firmly.

_"Okay, let's do this."_

Once she saw the first test chamber Chell couldn't believe her eyes. The test consisted of a pit with a weighted cube in it, a button by the chamber-lock and a camera above the button. _"She's not serious, is she?"_

"Good. You're five minutes ahead of schedule. I'm surprised to be honest. Try not to get stuck on this test and perhaps you'll do fine in the other ones as well. Oh and I've given Orange and Blue a break. Aren't I nice? They are here with me watching how you do. Try to set an example for them. Sometimes it feels like they are acting a bit too… human. Maybe they could– oh, wait, you're one of the humans as well, aren't you? Never mind then. Back to testing you two!"

The broadcast was cut off abruptly and Chell gave a silent chuckle. The girl didn't even need to give a thought to how the test was supposed to be solved, but noticing how the button had been placed in relation to the lone camera that was on a non-portalable surface gave her an idea. She spent the next two minutes lining up her orange portal just right on the white ceiling before moving over to the pit. She then put down her blue portal under the cube and watched as it fell from the ceiling and came smashing against the camera, damaging it severely and almost managing to knock it off the wall.

"What are you doing? Must you destroy absolutely everything you see? How… _human_ of you."

Chell stuck out her tongue but then realized she'd just broken the only camera in the room and that GLaDOS couldn't see her. Exhilarated, the girl let a huge grin appear on her face, jumped around a few time and danced a really silly dance very briefly. It was all incredibly childish, but since GLaDOS was always trying to have fun at her expense, the girl figured it was only fitting that she had some fun of her own mocking the AI from time to time. And it wasn't like she'd completely wasted her time fooling around; as planned, the cube had landed on the button and the door was now open. With her head held high the brunette walked through the doorway and as expected she was addressed once again by her captor's low, half-synthetic voice which was surprisingly pleasant on the ears.

"Unbelievable! You, [subject name here], must be the– oh, forget it. Let's not start repeating ourselves, don't you agree? Seriously though, if you take this long on the first, simple test, I can easily extrapolate that this isn't going to end well. I'm seriously starting to wonder how you manage to get your shoelaces tied. Oh, that's right, the long fall boots don't have any. Isn't that convenient?"

Chell just shook her head and wondered how she was going to get through forty-nine more test chambers if she was going to be forced to listen to the supercomputer's comments after each one. This was supposed to be both mental and physical training for her though, so the girl decided to take things a bit more seriously although being put through ridiculously easy tests didn't really motivate her to push herself, especially after everything she'd been put through the night before. Any traces of her previous attitude vanished very quickly however, for once Chell reached chamber five it stumped her, seriously stumped her.

The chambers leading up to it had been child's play, tests only good for introducing some of the basics to a novice, so when GLaDOS's reinstated test subject reached the fifth chamber she had to look at the number next to the entrance to check if she'd been daydreaming and somehow completed a dozen tests without even realizing it. The increase in difficulty was so steep that it took Chell a full minute to deduce what it was she even needed to do in order to complete the test. Once she'd managed that, it took her an additional eight minutes to actually successfully execute the series of actions necessary to finish the room.

_"I guess the gloves are off,"_ the girl thought to herself once she was finally at the exit. To her slight surprise the test actually consisted of an additional room, but luckily it only took her a couple of minutes to complete. When finally standing in the elevator waiting for it to arrive at the sixth test, Chell wondered if the previous chamber's purpose had been to wake her up and prepare her for what her hostess had in store for her. The final tests in yesterday's trial had been truly devious, but the amount of adrenaline in her blood and the constant fear of death combined with her incredibly strong desire to beat GLaDOS had made the girl perform far beyond what she was normally capable of and a lot of the time she'd been placing portals almost instinctively before even being consciously aware why she was doing the things she was. Trying to achieve something like that today was most likely going to be impossible, but with forty-five more rooms to go it was starting to seem likely that the last chambers were going to be even more difficult than anything Chell had had to solve before.

For the next couple of hours humanity's possibly last representative on Earth kept solving puzzle after puzzle and at some point stopped caring about how many chambers she had cleared or how much time had passed. After getting rid of the last crumbs of her morning grogginess the girl started getting back into the full swing of things despite her muscles sometimes begging her to have mercy on them after all that they'd been through only twelve hours before.

The difficulty of the tests kept ramping up as one would have suspected, but the increase was more gradual than Chell had dreaded and as a result she found herself more at ease once it started to feel like she was making good progress. From time to time the girl felt challenged but surprisingly it often wasn't because of GLaDOS intentionally throwing an incredibly tricky puzzle at her but a result of the brunette's own lack of observation or proper comprehension of the correct solution. At times Chell even found herself feeling gratified after succeeding in finishing a room that had given her a really hard time.

As much as the girl hated to admit it, GLaDOS was good at designing puzzles that looked simple but weren't necessarily easy to solve yet still felt really satisfying once the solution had become apparent. Every time Chell found herself able to see the solution with her mind's eye before even lifting a finger, let alone placing a portal, she felt really pleased with her own aptitude for puzzle solving, but tried to not let the grand designer of the tests know she was actually having a surprising amount of fun. Who knows how GLaDOS would react to finding out her test subject was enjoying some of her test. Perhaps she'd make the next rooms fiendishly difficult and dangerous to wipe the smile off Chell's face just to feel pleased herself.

Only when occasionally walking around a corner and realizing she was looking directly at a turret that was preparing to fill her flesh with tiny led pellets was Chell reminded of the reality that any of these tests could be the end of her were she not careful and that one foolish mistake was all it took to end her journey in this world. However, either thanks to skill, luck or a bit of both, the young woman found herself standing in an elevator after yet another successful test chamber and was to her surprise addressed by GLaDOS who'd already served the girl her portion of passive-aggressive comments half-wittily clad in the form of fake praise at the end of the previous room.

"Oh look at the time. It's noon already. It's time for your lunch. I seriously hope the lack of sustenance is the cause of your less than admirable performance so far because the _proper_ tests are about to start rolling in after this break. Are you excited? I'm excited. Not because of your small struggles but because of how much progress the cooperative testing initiative is making. Remember how I told you that Orange and Blue were watching you with me? I lied. They were never here. There's no way I'd ever forget that you're a human, especially since no one else here is. You actually kind of stand out, you know? It's mostly the smell, but also the smell. Anyway, you have thirty minutes. Spend it however you like."

Just as GLaDOS finished talking, the elevator arrived at what appeared to be a small room where employees had once upon a time been able to spend their breaks if they so chose either reading magazines, watching TV, preparing small meals or just chatting with their coworkers over a game of cards, perhaps even having heated discussions about atomic physics and whatnot. Chell already knew the company's CEO had had more than a few screws loose; she could only wonder what the scientist working here had been like. Or perhaps calling Cave Johnson crazy was going a bit too far, but he definitely was eccentric, that much was certain. On second thought, yeah he was nuts. Chell would never be able to forget that speech about those damn lemons.

Trying to push the long-dead man from her mind, Chell sat in a chair next to one of the two small round tables in the middle of the room which had her lunch on it waiting for her. If her breakfast had been inadequate in quantity the lunch in front of her made her almost wish she'd been given nothing, so little was there for her to consume. Only a single sandwich stood on a small plate next to a glass of water. The sandwich had been cut in half into the shape of a triangle but at least it consisted of four slices of break stacked on top of one another.

Chell picked up the sandwich and finding it too big to fit comfortably into her mouth she used her hands to flatten it a bit while avoiding the fillings from spilling out. After the first bite the brunette was forced to take back her initial complaint about the quantity of food for the sandwich was actually a step up from this morning's breakfast in terms of taste. The bread itself seemed fresh and the combination of mayonnaise and what was probably salmon was, although not a gourmet meal by any means, a reasonably delicious little snack in its own right.

In less than a minute the sandwich was already gone and the girl was left licking her fingers and trying to hold back tears.

_"Why can't she give me a little more? She clearly has food, so why can't I have as much as I need? This is worse than her sarcastic remarks. Well maybe not quite, but I call this torture nonetheless. You can't just give someone a taste of something but leave them hanging like this. My body craves more food than this and even an AI like her should know that."_

Chell took a look at the red-eyed glossy white sphere attached to one of the walls. _"Of course she does."_

After longing after another sandwich for a few more minutes the lone heroine finally decided to pull her act together and show more of the tenacity she knew was one of her strong suits. There were still plenty of tests left and whining to herself like a child wasn't going to accomplish anything. A bathroom visit later the clock on the wall told Chell she still had ten more minutes to spend before testing was going to resume. Disregarding what the former employees would've thought of her conduct, the girl threw herself on one of the couches in the room and put her feet on the armrest without bothering to take off her boots.

_"Aaaah. It feels so good to stretch my body like this. I think I'll close my eyes just for a few minutes…"_

The young woman exhaled deeply and lay perfectly still allowing a soothing wave of calmness wash over her. Just as she was getting really comfortable a loud buzzer made her eyes fling open and the moment was gone.

"Break time's over."

_"Of course it is."_

It turned out GLaDOS wasn't just making hollow claims when she'd said the proper tests were still ahead of Chell. After two more chambers the young woman started to notice that the tests were beginning to require a lot more brainwork than typically and almost every puzzle consisted of multiple steps and incorporated several already familiar puzzle mechanics in one. On top of that most of the tests were designed so that one had to plan their next step ahead of time before attempting to solve the room, otherwise they'd end up getting stuck and forced to redo the puzzle all the way from the beginning.

Emancipation grills were very commonplace and Chell often found herself frustrated when right at the end a cleverly placed grill she'd missed earlier forced her to say goodbye to the cube she'd so painstakingly tried to bring with her through the room. Some of the rooms also felt more like mind games than traditional puzzles. They were designed so that after inspecting the puzzle layout they showed similar patterns to the rooms that had come before, but after countless futile attempts and a more thorough inspection it became apparent that the majority of the elements in the room were just a diversion and the room couldn't actually be completed the way that seemed the most logical at first. The real solutions were often simple to execute but require some real outside-the-box thinking.

After encountering a few rooms like that Chell was both slightly on her toes because she saw the new test variants as a very personal challenge from GLaDOS to her and at the same time somewhat surprisingly impressed by the AI's ability to try to understand her thinking patterns and use that against her. The late tests were clearly custom-made for Chell and after getting used to them the girl started to appreciate the effort her supervisor had put into designing them. If the supercomputer was to be trusted the tests were intended to improve the girl's cognitive thinking and slowly but surely she was starting to feel that small improvement had been made.

Even the last traces of that feeling evaporated when the pride of her unnamed and likely long-gone hometown reached the set of last ten puzzles. Room forty-one alone took her almost half an hour to complete, and after that Chell felt like a moron and her brain hurt more than she thought possible. Before the girl'd even realized where all of her time had gone GLaDOS told her in the middle of a test that it was four o'clock and that testing was over for the day. It still took the brunette fifteen more minutes to finish the chamber she was on, but once she was finally standing on the elevator taking her back outside the testing area, she wasn't feeling perfectly content with her own performance.

_"Dammit! She beat me last night and now I couldn't even solve her hardest tests within a reasonable amount of time. I refuse to admit she's better than me! All of those tests had solutions but… I just couldn't see them. Well eventually I did, but it took me a damn long time, that's for sure. I __**need**__ to get better. For a while I thought I was doing good but it's yesterday all over again. It doesn't matter if you're good at the easy to medium difficulty puzzles if you get totally stuck at the late-game stuff."_

While the portal gun wielding girl was still wallowing in self-pity, the glass elevator arrived at its destination and the doors opened. Chell looked up and felt overwhelmed by the sudden input of various stimuli. First off, there was the smell. The place Chell had arrived at looked like another employee area with a couple of sofas near the walls, a reasonably large and well-equipped kitchen at the back and single long dining table in the middle. The air was filled with the sweet, strong, mouthwatering scent of freshly made home-cooked food which originated from the incredible variety of meticulously prepared dishes arranged on the table in an eye-pleasing way.

And behind the table stood GLaDOS, wearing an apron over her dark gray slacks and loose white blouse, smiling at Chell.

"Dinner's ready."

As the blue-eyed android took off her apron, folded it neatly and put it away, all Chell could do was stand in the doorway frozen in place and stare at the artificial woman.

_"What the __**hell**__ is going on?"_

"Please sit down. It's best to start eating while the food is still hot," GLaDOS said, beckoning Chell to sit at the table.

Almost as if she was moving through water, the jumpsuit-clad girl placed her portal gun to rest against one of the couches near the elevator and slowly advanced toward the dining table. Covering the short distance seemed to take a surprising amount of time, but when the girl finally got to the table she noticed something that stopped her from taking her seat. There were TWO plates on the table: one in front of Chell, the other set across from her.

"Is something the matter?" the supercomputer inquired.

Chell pointed at the second plate and looked at GLaDOS confused.

"Oh. Well after going through all the trouble of preparing a meal such as this isn't it only natural that I'd want to try it for myself?"

The young woman was now profoundly perplexed. She pointed at the food, then at GLaDOS's mouth and lastly she began moving her mouth as if she was chewing something. To signal that her mime was supposed to form a question Chell concluded her simple attempt at communication by giving the AI a puzzled look.

A hint of a smile appeared at one corner of the android's lips. "Yes I can eat. What would be the point of me creating a magnificent body like this if it couldn't perform a simple task like eating? Although I must admit that producing a tongue that can taste things just like a human's was quite a challenge. This platform isn't designed to be a perfect analog to the human body, however. I've for example left out sweating, because why would anyone want that. That's just disgusting! But like I already said, let's sit down, because the food isn't getting any warmer."

Both of them sat down but Chell couldn't do anything but just stare at the amazing array of food on display. She couldn't believe GLaDOS had prepared all of it on her own without help; frankly she couldn't believe GLaDOS had _made_ food for her. Were the earlier meals made by her as well?

"What are you waiting for? Surely you must be hungry. This isn't a table where you have to wait for permission to begin. The food isn't poisonous either. Or don't you trust my cooking?"

Chell, whose mouth had been watering her entire time in the room, swallowed all the excess saliva in her mouth. She hadn't even considered that the food might be poisonous, but the mere mention of that made her feel slightly restless. What point would there be for GLaDOS to poison her though? And how could anyone possibly resist such a heavenly feast – especially a starving, sweaty girl whose stomach decided to growl right at that moment.

Chell grabbed her utensils and started scooping food onto her plate. In hardly any time at all she'd already sampled on her plate boiled potatoes seasoned with herbs, several generous slices of oven-baked turkey, fresh salad, a thinly breaded fish fillet with a touch of sea salt and black pepper, and a piece of warm, fresh-baked bread with butter on it. There were even more dished available, but there was only so much room on the plate; the girl would have to try the rest on her next round.

Without delay the ponytailed test subject started stuffing her face. The food was divine, full of different flavors that complemented each other very well and made using ingredients that were clearly of high quality. A small but way too quiet voice kept telling Chell to stop to savor the tastes but she ignored it completely, unable to control herself.

"My my, there's no need for you to eat so fast. There's no time limit for this test. In fact, this isn't even a test. You realize that, don't you?"

Chell slowed down her pace slightly to give the AI a cold stare but when she noticed GLaDOS had yet to touch her food the girl's fork stopped in midair. For some reason the android looked very anxious and for the life of her Chell couldn't figure out why that could be.

"How is it?" GLaDOS asked talking more quietly than usual, seeming genuinely interested to hear the answer.

"Delicious!" Chell almost blurted out, which would have ruined everything, but she barely managed to contain herself. The question itself still felt like a one she couldn't just leave unanswered, but the girl wondered if honesty was the right way to go. When it came to GLaDOS, nothing was ever as straightforward as it seemed and this question could have very well been a test of some sort. After considering it briefly Chell came to the conclusion that lying seemed pointless given the rate at which she'd been downing the food just moments before. There was also the possibility that if she told GLaDOS she didn't particularly like the food the android would never make any of today's dishes in the future, which was a risk Chell couldn't take.

Very awkwardly the girl curled her lips to a smile as a rudimentary attempt to communicate that she enjoyed the food.

"Oh good. This was my first time cooking so I wasn't sure if I did everything right. Blue was the one who made breakfast for you and I let Orange take care of your lunch. It was a special test for them and since you ate everything I gave them a passing grade."

"Speaking of testing…" the supercomputer continued, pausing to put a forkful of her own cooking into her mouth. "This **is** good," she said, almost surprised. The expression on her face was something truly exceptional and Chell did her best to store a mental image deep in her brain for later viewing. "As I was saying, you didn't quite manage to complete all of the tests on today's agenda." GLaDOS said it very casually while placing another forkful into her mouth but Chell thought she could detect undercurrents of disappointment, dissatisfaction, reprehension, vexation, criticism and god knows what else underneath the otherwise perfectly calm surface of the android's comment. Maybe she was just imagining it though.

"Did you pay attention to how many of the tests you finished?" the AI asked while pouring some creamy mango sauce over a grilled chicken breast. She looked up at Chell who shook her head, feeling a bit like a child whose parent was asking her if she'd done her homework. "Forty-four," GLaDOS informed her. "You seemed to have some trouble with the later tests, especially that last one." Again the AI spoke very matter-of-factly, but it was the supercomputer's calmness that made Chell feel extremely uneasy and it took her every effort to conceal her restlessness.

_"I sure was lucky that last test I solved wasn't one of yesterday's tests,"_ the girl thought blessing her good fortune.

"You're lucky that wasn't one of the tests during our race. Because now you'd probably be, you know, dead. Aren't you glad?"

Chell found it spooky how well GLaDOS's words had reflected her own thoughts and so she decided to concentrate more on her eating to try to drown out the AI's presence in her mind.

GLaDOS's next comment made her attempt an utter failure.

"I thought you'd be interested to know that tomorrow's tests are going to be harder than the ones today. There's not much point to training if there isn't a natural progression in difficulty, wouldn't you agree?"

The news made Chell feel immediately slightly more anxious. _"Harder tests? I guess this was to be expected. The problem is I already had trouble with the tests near the end. I have nothing against the earlier tests being made more challenging, but if even the harder tests are made harder I will definitely have a tough time solving them, even if I try much harder than today."_

To the girl's relief the android let her eat in peace for the next several minutes, but the more Chell ate, the more she couldn't help wondering something that had been bothering her at the back of her mind throughout the day: where did GLaDOS get all of this food? The question hadn't seemed like the most important thing in the world given the young brunette's current situation, but gradually Chell was starting to feel she would die if she didn't hear the answer.

The girl put down her fork and knife and looked at GLaDOS trying to get her attention. Apparently noticing the human's lack of activity the AI looked up in turn with a questioning look on her face.

"Yes?"

Chell found it weird that she was actively attempting to communicate with the supercomputer but pushing past the strange sensation she moved her hands over the food on the table trying to focus the attention on it and then looked left and right wearing an expression that was supposed to look like she was seeking an answer.

GLaDOS said nothing and only continued to stare at Chell. The girl repeated the gestures a few times, feeling increasingly more embarrassed after each attempt. Just as she was about to give up because she was starting to feel like she was making a total fool of herself, the AI finally spoke. "You know what? It has of course occurred to a supercomputer of my intelligence ages ago that giving you a piece of paper and a pen would make communication a whole lot easier, but I'm not going to do that since I find it incredibly charming how bad you are at this sign language thing. Lucky for you, I've created a program that allows me to comprehend the communication attempts of… _lesser_ minds, shall we say – most of the time anyway. Note that no one used the word 'moron' in reference to you before me just now of course."

Chell wasn't sure what on earth she had been expecting but she was already regretting her decision to attempt communication with the AI.

"Unless I'm mistaken," GLaDOS continued, "you were trying to inquire where I got the ingredients for the dinner we are eating, is that correct?"

Chell nodded, slightly relieved GLaDOS had actually understood the meaning of her pitiful gestures.

"Mr. Jo– The company's founder was afraid of a third World War and prepared a vault filled with various food items to keep himself and the people in the highest positions fed for several months in case of an extended stay underground. A technology similar to our relaxation chambers is used to store the food so I assure you everything is as fresh as it was when it was stored away."

"Not everything comes from the vault, however. The eggs you ate this morning for example were hardly more than a few hours old. I sent out Orange and Blue to scout the area around Aperture Science one day. Blue managed to somehow find a chicken, a hen, you know… one of those white… birds. Anyway! I told him to take it to the other side of the facility so that it wouldn't, you know, disturb anyone; so that it wouldn't disturb testing."

Chell was finding it hard to hold back a giggle. At the same time she was wondering why GLaDOS wasn't having any issues eating chicken or turkey and actually potatoes as well for that matter, but perhaps she only had problems with things she thought were trying to murder her. _"Is she afraid that I might try to kill her, I wonder?"_

"The milk you are drinking comes from one of the cows Orange herded together and brought in as well. It was homogenized using the equipment I built. Did you know that human females who have given birth also produce milk? Who would want to drink that? Would you drink that? I wouldn't drink that. I'm sure Orange and Blue wouldn't either – not that they could, of course."

_"Stop talking! As if it wasn't bad enough that you've made yourself look like a human, now I have to endure sitting with you at the same table, eating food that YOU made for me and listen to your subtle but not too subtle comments about how much better you think you are than me. I doubt I could stand how uncomfortable this situation is if I wasn't enjoying the food so damn much."_

It was apparently obvious from Chell's face how she was feeling because GLaDOS chuckled at the girl. "When I beat you, victory didn't taste as sweet as I had expected. Maybe that's because there was no cake but I think a lot of it had to do with my disappointment in your performance. After what happened today, I believe you require additional encouragement to motivate you to push yourself harder; your current effort is nowhere near enough. How about a punishment for failing to complete all of the tests?"

Chell's eyes widened when she heard the word 'punishment'. Luckily GLaDOS was concentrating on her food and didn't see her reaction.

"I'll need to think of one for tomorrow," the artificial intelligence added and poured more milk into her near-empty glass. "Milk?" she then offered and Chell held out her glass to let the android fill it as well. For a while the two continued to eat with only the sound of their utensils clinking against their plates occasionally breaking the silence. "Hey, I know," GLaDOS then suddenly dropped between bites. "How about if you don't complete all of the tests tomorrow, you'll have to go to bed without dinner. That should motivate you."

Chell froze and nearly dropped her fork. She'd been trying to avoid showing her reactions to the android because that was certainly one of the things she wanted from her, but this time GLaDOS's words had struck home and the girl's attempts to remain stoic failed. Chell didn't want to look at her hostess, but she was sure the android was smiling, if not on the outside then at least on the inside.

_"She planned this!"_ the girl cursed. _"I knew there had to be a reason for her to go through the trouble of preparing a dinner like this. Oh, I should have seen this coming. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"_

As simple as GLaDOS's choice for the penalty seemed, once Chell managed to calm herself a little she couldn't help but admire how well chosen it was. She definitely wanted to have another opportunity to eat this well again and would without question give it her all to make sure that came true. But the question she didn't know the answer to was whether proper motivation was all that she needed in order to succeed or if GLaDOS was actually just toying with her and making the tests intentionally too difficult for her.

"Instead of seeing it as a penalty you can almost think of it as a reward as well. Isn't it funny how much everything can depend on one's perspective?"

Chell wasn't particularly amused.

To her relief the supercomputer didn't continue the conversation – well, monologue really – and once more the girl had an opportunity to try to enjoy the food in peace while pretending the android wasn't there. But she was there, and pretending the opposite wasn't an easy thing to do. Finally, once the brunette was starting to feel incredibly full and was about to move on to dessert, she realized GLaDOS had stopped. Looking up from her plate, Chell's eyes met with the android's, which were observing her patiently full of curiosity. Evidently she had finished eating.

"What? I wasn't going to say anything about how much food you are consuming. Please continue stuffing your face."

Chell could feel a slight blush form on her face as she realized how much she'd actually eaten already and decided to only take a modest amount of white chocolate mousse into her bowl. She didn't know why, but she glanced at GLaDOS to see if the android disapproved of the size of her helping.

_"Oh god this is good,"_ the girl thought as she closed her lips around the first spoonful of mousse and allowed it to just slowly melt in her mouth, letting the delightful sweetness caress her tongue.

"The ingredients stored in the vault are only of the highest quality. Of course I still lack experience when it comes to cooking but I'm glad the dessert seems to be to your liking. I found the recipe in… _her_ cookbook. There are still many others I want to try out."

Chell opened her eyes which she hadn't even realized she'd closed and took a sip of cold milk, followed by another spoonful of fluffy mousse. _"Who's _she_?"_ the girl pondered while enjoying the rich flavor and incredible texture of the dessert. _"Oh, she must mean Caroline."_

In hardly any time at all the brunette's bowl was empty and she wished she'd taken just a tad bit larger portion, but resisting the temptation for seconds she resolutely placed her spoon into the empty glass bowl and looked at the blue-eyed android who'd done an incredible job with the dinner. "Finished?" the AI asked. Chell nodded. "Good. We're done for the day then. You may go to your room and rest. Don't worry about the dishes; Orange and Blue will take care of them."

Perfectly on cue the elevator doors behind Chell opened. The girl got to her feet and walked over to it, fully ready to crash on her bed and just stare at the ceiling for a while. Her stomach felt like it was about to burst and she was thankful she hadn't eaten any more than she had.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Chell turned around and looked at the android, tilting her head puzzled. GLaDOS motioned with her head toward the portal gun which was still resting against the sofa.

_"Shit."_ The young woman quickly moved over to the couch and took her trusted friend securely into her hands. How could she have totally forgotten the most important item in the world to her?

"You should be thankful I didn't let you go your merry way without the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. Had you begun testing tomorrow without it, you would have been trapped in the first test chamber, unable to solve it. Forever."

Chell wasn't sure if she should feel gratitude towards the person who was the one who'd put her in the situation she was in, but a small part of her felt that GLaDOS was actually being nice to her despite her tone and choice of words. Yesterday she'd chosen to save the girl from falling to her death and now she'd prevented her from leaving behind the very thing she needed to finish the tests she would be facing. True, the AI was the one in charge of everything, but to Chell it felt that she was playing by a certain set of rules she'd imposed on herself. The fact that GLaDOS had chosen to possibly bend the rules a little and help Chell not just once but twice already made her question how well she actually thought she knew the artificial intelligence who'd murdered every single Aperture employee, tried to murder Chell, lied about there being cake, called Chell her best friend… and made her the most magnificent meal any person could dream of.

Shyly, the young woman gave the dark brown haired android a small nod and entered the elevator carrying the gun that made holes that weren't bullet holes. As the elevator took her toward the floor her apartment was on, Chell tried to summarize the day's events up to that point, but the things that kept her confused about GLaDOS quickly overwhelmed her and she was forced to stop and exhale slowly to recollect herself. Once the elevator had stopped at her floor, the still slightly dazed girl walked over to her apartment door. But just like that morning, Chell's hand stopped on the door handle and she could hear a voice – likely her own voice of reason – talking to her in her head.

_"What the hell do you think you're doing?"_

_"Excuse me?"_ Chell replied to what was essentially herself.

_"Look around you, you idiot. Now's your chance to escape! I know you were too exhausted yesterday, but you're _only_ tired now so why are you heading into your room? Start running stupid!"_

_"That sounds tempting, but like you said, I'm really tired. Wouldn't it be a better idea to wait for when I'm not as drained?"_

_"You'll be just as tired tomorrow after testing! And who knows, you might mess up tomorrow and die. Or that psycho AI might get bored with you and decide to kill you with deadly neurotoxin. No, you need to get out now. It's now or never! I bet GLaDOS isn't expecting it so you'll have at least a small element of surprise."_

_"But I'm not even sure if I want to leave right now. GLaDOS seems to have changed and I want to figure out what's going on with her. Besides, I know it's not rational, but I really want to beat her in the race."_

_"Oh no. You didn't seriously fall for her 'what I really want is to see you win' speech, did you? That's total crap! Why would she want to see you win? That doesn't even make sense! She's playing weird mind games with you, trying to make you stay out of your own free will without even trying to escape. And guess what, her plan is working like a charm! She's always been manipulative, so why are you listening to anything she says?"_

_"I don't think it's a good idea to listen to anything a voice in your head tells you to do either."_

_"But I'm __**you**__. I'm only telling you the things you already know but don't want to admit."_

_"Regardless. It's not normal for people to have conversations with themselves like this. At least I don't think so."_

_"Hey, listen to me. Just because she made a delicious dinner for you doesn't mean she's suddenly your friend. Friends don't stick you with needles and drag you to underground facilities against your will. Also don't let the small sense of euphoria you felt after solving some of the tests today fool you into thinking you enjoy testing or that it's fun. Any of those tests could have easily killed you."_

_"Don't try to tell me what I can and can't enjoy."_

_"Why are you being so stubborn for no valid reason?"_

_"Because that's the way I am and since you're me you should already know that. I'm not going to listen to what GLaDOS or anyone else tells me to do, I make up my own damn mind. Why won't you shut up and leave me alone already?"_

_"If you promise me you won't do anything GLaDOS wants you to, I'll leave."_

_"I don't need to promise you anything. I'm tired of listening to you, other me. I give you five seconds to return to the recess of my mind where you came from, after that I don't want to hear from you ever again."_

_"But_–_"_

_"One."_

_"I'm not finished."_

_"Two."_

_"Don't be stupid."_

_"Three."_

_"You know I'm right."_

_"Four."_

_"Fine, have it your way."_

_"Five."_

Silence.

Chell tried listening, but she couldn't hear anything; the voice in her head was gone. She let out a long, silent sigh. _"God, I thought I was going crazy. This place messes with your head. The last thing I need is that I turn into a nutcase. Ha ha, maybe I am already. It wouldn't surprise me if I was literally bonkers and I was imagining everything that is going on in my life. That would actually make more sense than what's really happening."_

The girl wondered how long she'd just stood there with her hand hovering over the knob. She knew there was a camera right behind her aimed directly at the door. Who knows what GLaDOS thought of her behavior, if she was even watching. After another sigh the young woman opened the door and entered.

The semi-nutjob brunette placed her portal gun on the hook and entered the bathroom opening the zipper on her jumpsuit and tying the sleeves around her waist. Resting her hands on the sink she stared at her own reflection in the mirror evaluating herself.

_"I wasn't going to admit this to a voice I was hearing in my head, but the other me was right about one thing."_

Chell stared incredibly intensely into her own eyes for several moments before finally slamming her hands against the basin.

_"RUN GIRL!"_

Grabbing her portal gun on the fly, the girl charged out of the apartment and began sprinting down the unbelievably long corridor. She didn't pay attention to which direction she picked; all that mattered now was getting as far away from GLaDOS as possible.

_"Try and catch me now, GLaDOS,"_ the girl dared the android in her mind. _"Yesterday we had a race, but this time it's a chase."_

Chell ran at her top speed, not caring about the large number of cameras she ran past. She could have easily broken the ones that were on white walls using her portal gun, but if GLaDOS was watching her progress right now it would have served absolutely no purpose whatsoever. And if she for whatever reason was not monitoring her test subject's movements at the moment, breaking the cameras would tell the AI exactly where Chell had been. Besides, not all cameras could be detached using the portal gun so there was no point really.

After a few minutes of intense running, the orange-clad woman arrived at a door at the end of the hallway, her heart beating so fast that its pounding sounded almost continuous in her ears. Storming through the door, the test subject arrived at a lobby of an office complex. Noticing an elevator, the girl's eyes scanned the room swiftly, looking for– Yes! The staircase. The girl rushed up the stairs, leaping three at a time. She didn't know where she was going, but she knew the direction she wanted to go: up. If she continued going up, logic dictated she would eventually have to reach the surface; that was the plan.

Once at the top of the stairs, Chell wasn't sure how many floors she'd climbed but she was starting to realize she was pushing her already strained body too much and that if she didn't slow her pace a little she would succumb to exhaustion in a matter of minutes. Who knows how much more she had to go, but for her to have a genuine chance of escaping Chell knew she would have to prepare to outrun GLaDOS for at least a couple of hours – which was easier said than done. Thus far she had been moving at her maximum speed but the android without a doubt knew the facility much better than her and didn't suffer from fatigue. If Chell would've dared to try using the elevators everything would have been much easier, but she couldn't take the risk of GLaDOS taking control of the elevator while she was using it and trapping her in it.

The girl continued her escape at a slightly reduced pace. She was still pushing herself, but she managed to stay just below the limit of what was too much for her. She used portalable walls to her advantage to skip through entire areas whenever she could but unfortunately that wasn't possible as often as she would have preferred.

After the office building, Chell found herself running through the observation area for one of the testing tracks. The sight of the empty monitoring rooms overseeing the equally empty test chambers was strangely unnerving and to her surprise Chell would have preferred seeing them in use rather than in their current state – provided that the test subjects were volunteers and the test weren't deadly, of course.

The testing course was followed by a manufacturing plant for weighted storage cubes. As she was running through it Chell tried to spot a companion cube, but sadly she couldn't; they must have been made in another facility. With her mind set on only the thought of escaping, time passed quickly, and after going through dining halls, maintenance areas, R&D departments, an enormous warehouse full of hideous shower curtains and several office wings and apartment complexes, at least a couple of hour must have passed and Chell found herself leaning against the rail of a catwalk connecting two buildings to one another, panting and taking her first break which she should have taken an hour ago. She had totally lost any sense of direction by this point and where she was in relation to her apartment was a complete mystery. The view she had of the incomprehensibly large underground facility she had already seen countless times before didn't fail to boggle her mind and at the same time discourage her for it didn't seem like she was any closer to reaching the top.

_"This truly is a magnificent sight. Shame that it has been reduced to being hardly anything more than an empty shell. I don't perhaps agree with everything that went on in this place, but the place itself is definitely an achievement in itself."_

As Chell turned to face the building she had been heading toward before her body had demanded a quick breather, a voice from behind made her stop dead in her tracks.

"You seem to be lost."

The girl's breath caught in her throat. _"She found me. I shouldn't have stopped, I shouldn't have."_ Chell weighed her options quickly in her head. The door in front of her was too far away. Even if she made it to it before GLaDOS caught up with her, opening the door would take too much time. **If** the hallway after the door had portalable walls Chell would have a chance to use portals to put some distance between her and the android, assuming the AI wasn't carrying a portal gun as well, which was unlikely.

No, trying to run away was too unreliable. The only option was to face GLaDOS. Chell didn't want to though, and she hesitated to turn around.

_"Why did I do this?"_ the girl asked herself, but she already knew the answer. _"Because I couldn't have lived with myself if I didn't."_

Chell tightened her grip on her portal gun. Slowly she turned around to face the android, who was just standing there on the catwalk twenty feet from the girl looking at her calmly. Planting one foot behind her Chell took a defensive stance. With nothing but her portal gun at her disposal and no portal-accepting surfaces around, the only strategy the girl could come up with was to try and use her portal gun as a weapon and hit GLaDOS with it. The android might've been stronger and faster than her but if she managed to score a direct hit to the AI's head on this narrow walkway there was hopefully a chance to disable GLaDOS at least momentarily. Chell didn't like the idea of using a miraculous device like the portal gun as a primitive instrument for hitting people but the young woman saw no other way to try to resolve the situation she had ended up in.

Without blinking Chell stared at the android and prepared herself to attack swiftly and decisively once the AI would be in range. She wasn't going to move – GLaDOS would have to come to her. And she did. Very casually the android who was wearing her skintight full-body suit started walking towards the selectively mute girl who was gripping her portal gun like her life depended on it. Against Chell's expectations GLaDOS hadn't brought a portal gun with her and didn't seem to pay attention to the human's extremely tense posture. She was in fact looking directly into Chell's gray eyes without even a hit of hostility showing up in her own blue optics. Her gaze was very… gentle, a word Chell didn't expect to ever associate with her AI hostess.

Bewildered by the android's mesmerizing gaze, the young woman hesitated to attack when the AI got in range. Frozen in place by the strange aura that seemed to surround GLaDOS, Chell allowed her to walk right beside her without her even moving a muscle. Gently the AI placed her hand on the girl's shoulder and squeezed it lightly. "Come on, let's head back," she said still looking directly into the young woman's eyes. Chell felt her body and mind relax immediately upon hearing the peaceful tone of the android's voice. Dumbfounded, she gave GLaDOS a nod and the supercomputer smiled.

Relieved her stupid failed escape attempt hadn't resulted in a violent encounter between the two, the ponytailed brunette started walking back in the direction she'd originally come from with GLaDOS following closely behind.

"On second thought," GLaDOS said once the two had almost reached the end of the catwalk, "this is much faster." Grabbing hold of the girl from the waist, GLaDOS picked Chell up in the air and threw her over the rail in one fluid motion. Before the girl even had time to react she was already falling at incredible speed, her chest aching and feeling like it had suddenly become totally hollow.

_"No, no, no!"_ Chell shouted in her head. _"How could you fall for that venomous woman's deceitful words and kind smile so easily? Now you are going to die because of_–_"_

A clonk interrupted the girl's self-accusation spell and made her snap back into paying attention to her surroundings. She'd landed on another walkway roughly a hundred feet below the one she'd just been on.

_"Oh, right, I have my long fall boots on."_ In her panic the girl's brain had completely shut down and she'd managed to forget that falls weren't a threat to her as long as she landed on her feet. _"I guess I'm kinda like a cat now that I think about it. Perhaps I should start thinking more like one."_

Another clonk from behind made Chell spin around on her heels. The startled girl was surprisingly relived to see that it was only the android who'd just moments before thrown her off a catwalk – onto another catwalk.

"See? Much faster. Even if it wasn't, the elevator closest to the bridge we were on is broken so we would've had to come down quite the number of stairs. Good thing I know my way around this place like the back of my hand. Shall we go?"

Not waiting for a response, GLaDOS walked past the girl with brisk steps. After just standing there watching after the AI for a couple of seconds Chell's brain finally recovered from the yet another emotional roller coaster ride GLaDOS had put her through and she rushed after the supercomputer whose behavior continued to perplex her.

When they arrived at the front door to Chell's apartment no more than fifteen minutes later, the girl couldn't stop being amazed by how big a difference elevators made when moving around the enormous facility. She also couldn't stop being incredibly disappointed in how little progress she'd managed to make during her escape attempt. GLaDOS hadn't even had to run after her. She had probably just monitored the girl's progress using her cameras and taken a couple of elevator rides to reach the girl once she started to look like she was getting exhausted.

_"Pathetic,"_ Chell summarized her endeavor. Now that she thought about it, she'd actually never managed to escape Aperture on her own. The first time she'd been thrown outside after defeating GLaDOS. That was something that just happened. It hadn't even been a successful escape either. The second time when Chell had actually gotten out GLaDOS had _let_ her leave; **told** her to leave to be exact. All this time Chell had thought of herself as a kind of a veteran when it came to escaping from this place, but in reality she'd yet to succeed once. That was a depressing thought. Or it would have been if Chell wasn't smiling. Why was she smiling? Because she was starting to think there was such a thing as fate. And fate wanted her to stay and beat GLaDOS. Chell had nothing against that; she wanted to beat GLaDOS too. She'd already tried to escape fully prepared to die in the progress, but here she was still alive and staring into the eyes of her nemesis who was standing right next to her. Chell was convinced beating GLaDOS would put a permanent smile on her face – it would be the ultimate reward.

GLaDOS probably had no idea why the human was smiling at her, but she didn't seem the least taken aback and merely smiled back. This continued for over a minute but finally the supercomputer told Chell to take a shower because she was covered in "disgusting secretion" aka sweat again and told her to try to get some rest because there would be more tests waiting for her tomorrow. She also said that Chell shouldn't wander so far next time on her evening walks because she had work to do and didn't have time to come show the girl the way back to her room every time.

As the AI entered the elevator and rode away the girl cursed her own decision to refrain from talking back to the android because each passing minute she spent with the cursed artificial intelligence made it harder for her to just endure what she had to say to her. Still, after a day of disappointments and unexpected interactions with GLaDOS, Chell felt a renewed sense of purpose. Yesterday had been a failure but there would be other chances and next time she would do better. If she didn't win, she would have to train harder. GLaDOS believed she couldn't be beaten; Chell intended to do everything in her power to prove her wrong. She was going to make GLaDOS swallow her pride. Once the queen herself had been humiliated the girl would merely gesture she wanted to leave. If GLaDOS had anything against that she'd have to answer to Chell's portal gun. It was as simple as that.

_"Just you wait GLaDOS. We'll see who's better, woman or robot,"_ the girl thought to herself as she opened the door to her apartment and stepped inside. She also wondered what was for dinner tomorrow.

* * *

**A/N: If you had some kind of expectations for this chapter I hope it wasn't quite what you expected, because isn't it more fun to read a story that doesn't feel like something you could have easily written yourself? I enjoy variety and hopefully all of the chapters so far have offered a slightly different reading experience while still feeling like a coherent whole. The last thing I wish for my stories is for them to start repeating themselves and growing stale. If you ever feel like that is starting to happen, let me know, because I've seen far too many good stories lose direction and fail to reach their full potential.**

**As I've said, I'm very pleased with how chapter two turned out, so when I began working on this chapter I initially felt some pressure trying to write something that was similar in quality. Luckily that pressure dissipated rather quickly once I got back into the full swing of things. My goal has ****always been to simply write something I would enjoy reading myself and once I remembered that everything became much easier. ****The dining scene was never meant to be quite as prominent as it ended up being, but when I got to it it just seemed logical to milk it for all of its worth. I had a lot of fun writing it, although it was also incredibly tricky to put together. Well I guess the same goes for most of the chapter. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it!**

**From here on I'll be updating this story and "Laws of Robotics" equally, so every second update is going to be for this story and the others for "Laws of Robotics". I haven't decided what I'm going to do with "Close to the Edge" yet. It has relatively short chapters compared to my two other stories so likely I'll write it between updates for the other two when I feel like it. The fact that I've ended up juggling with three stories at the same time means updates for one specific story will be somewhat slow at times, but during the summer I hope to be able to get some more writing done than I normally do during my busy schedule. ****If you want to know what story I'm currently working on and when you might be able to expect an update to come out, I've been keeping track of that at the top of my profile page for about two months now.**

**I think that's enough talk for now. This story is more demanding to write than my other ones, but that also makes it really rewarding when I do good. I don't know when the next update is going to be but I will certainly try to make it a good one. That is all, till next time! : )**


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